Recently we got to visit Trossen Robotics in Chicago and go over our (BOSS) product with an eye toward feedback from people who deal with Robotic products daily. We are very Grateful and wish to give a shout out to Trossen Robotics for being so very cool to lend us some of their valuable time. It was a very interesting talk and I understand we got mentioned in there Shop Talk #3. Which we quite love to watch. In learning from that experience we decided to broaden the approach we are taking in order to make our version of the Open Source Servo more useful in different applications. We are working with Jonathan of Project Biped and experimenting with using the electronics not just for our specific servo application but also as the heart of a print your own 3D servo using such more novel gearing methods like Jonathans 3D printed Harmonic drive or even a 3D printed cylcodial drive!

So I decided 4 was a good test number to work out mass assembly bugs and help create a quality assurance assembly manual. I learned ALOT of lessons. The chief of which is to take notes during the prototype phase! I had to re-learn how to do certain basic functions like atmel fuse settings.. The other is that two chips may look the same but aren't! I dumped what I thought were some samples of a 5V regulator in with all my others and they turned out to be 3.3V regulators! Naturally and luckly I put two of the 3.3v chips in during this test of 4 and caught the mistake because I had 2 others to compare against. I wont be making that mistake again! Here are some pictures, cause I know I for one love pictures. Oh and by the way all 4 work perfect now!

Well after 60+ hours of milling time and untold hours of actually designing the part, I finally created the mold and ta da it didnt work! Edison is credited as saying "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Well i havent failed.. Ive simply found 100K lines of Gcode that will not make it thru the injection cycle without squirting out of places it shouldnt! Ive included some picture of the mold in the process of milling, the end result, the mold in the plastic injection machine, and the mold results. The mold fails to fill and because I placed the parts so close to the edge the pressure causes the plastic to push the mold halves apart and therefore not only fail to fill, but it leaves extra plastic in the top half that does. No worries though, Ive set out on the path of making a new mold and correcting these issues and will post a new story when they are done. If anyone would like some info on making your own mold, milling aluminum or just some other type questions, please feel free to post in the comments or in the forum. I'd like to take a moment here to talk about the plastic injection machine. This is the prototype I bough off Ebay from Medium Duty Machinery. Its an amazing piece of equipment and Ive done other less ambitious molds then this attempt that have worked flawlessly. I cant recommend enough Medium Duty Machinery's nifty machine for the small production/hobbiest level field.