3D Printed Blaster Does It With Compliant Components

The ease of integrating bendy parts into designs is one of 3D printing’s strengths. A great example of this is [uhltimate]’s six-shot blaster which integrates several compliant mechanis…

Rapid Prototyping PCBs With The Circuit Graver

Walking around the alley at Hackaday Supercon 2024, we noticed an interesting project was getting quite a bit of attention, so we got nearer for a close-up. The ‘Circuit Graver’ by [Zac…

Flexures Make Robotic Fingers Simpler To Print

Designing an anthropomorphic robotic hand seems to make a lot of sense — right up until the point that you realize just how complex the human hand is. What works well in bone and sinew often …

Flexures Keep This Printed Displacement Sensor In Line

When the job at hand is measuring something with micron-range precision, thoughts generally turn to a tool with a Mitutoyo or Starrett nameplate. But with a clever design and a little electronics k…

Squid-Con Brings Joy To All

While we’re always happy to see accessibility aids come into fruition, most of them focus on daily tasks, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But what about having some fun? That…

Physical Neural Network Can Be Trained Like A Digital One

Here’s an unusual concept: a computer-guided mechanical neural network (video, embedded below.) Why would one want a mechanical neural network? It’s essentially a tool to explore what i…

This Block Of Rubber Can Count To Ten

Complex behaviors can arise from simple mechanics, and that’s demonstrated by a block of rubber that acts as a counter. The block contains beams, and by controlling how the block is compresse…

A More Expressive Synth Via Flexure

Synthesizers can make some great music, but sometimes they feel a bit robotic in comparison to their analog counterparts. [Chris Guichet] built a “minimum viable” expressive synth to ov…

An Open Source Modular Flexure Construction Set

Flexures are one of those innocent-looking mechanisms that one finds inside practically any kind of consumer device. Providing constrained movements with small displacements, complete with controll…

Filament Cutter Uses Unusual (But Effective) 3D-Printed Spring Design

When one needs a spring, a 3D-printed version is maybe not one’s first choice. It might even be fair to say that printed springs are something one ends up making, rather than something one se…

Flexures Make This Six-DOF Positioner Accurate To The Micron Level

It’s no secret that we think flexures are pretty cool, and we’ve featured a number of projects that leverage these compliant mechanisms to great effect. But when we saw flexures used in…

Working Model Reveals Amazing Engineering Of Webb’s Mirror Actuators

We end up covering a lot of space topics here on Hackaday, not because we’re huge space nerds — spoiler alert: we are — but because when you’ve got an effectively unlimited …

Compliant Mechanisms Hack Chat

Join us on Wednesday, January 26 at noon Pacific for the Compliant Mechanisms Hack Chat with Amy Qian! When it comes to putting together complex mechanisms, we tend to think in a traditional design…