
Arduino-Powered Wire Bending Machine - eskimoblood
http://blog.makezine.com/2012/05/03/arduino-powered-wire-bending-machine/
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malandrew
How does it know how not to bend the wire so it doesn't interfere with its own
operation? And if it doesn't know, are there are set of heuristics used to
know when the design you make isn't possible?

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libria
I was waiting to see exactly how this was handled on the octothorpe, but he
strategically cut it short. Also, it seemed a little hand-wavy placing a
simple spring among a collection of far more complex 3d objects.

It's an awesome project, but I appreciate when engineers either show how they
addressed the edge cases, or are more honest about its failure points.

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ChuckMcM
Here is a youtube video of same: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve1zzDXlJoA>

(For some reason Firefox + linux doesn't like Vimeo most of the time)

This is a cool device. And wire bending is used in a _lot_ of things, from
making holders to support frames. These things tend to be tuned to a
particular wire gauge and minimum radius so some tool and die shops will have
either multiple benders or various dies for a configurable bender.

Cool things you can make with these are baskets for catching/holding parts,
springs, latch returns, awesome bubble wands, and artistic lettering.

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_mattb
So cool -- out of curiosity, is this emulating the actions of a pre-existing,
"professional" machine or is the concept brand new?

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neonkiwi
There are expensive machines you can buy that do this: CNC wire benders. From
the first page of YouTube hits: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwygMdpQ8SU>

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_mattb
Cool, thanks. I just noticed they allude to these machines in their blog post:
<http://blog.pensanyc.com/tagged/DIWire>

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oellegaard
Awesome!! However, I couldn't help notice that if you have a 3D object, it
seems that it keeps spinning the chord around the machine - at one point it
would unplug itself - should be an easy fix though.

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senthilnayagam
it will be hours of fun

somebody should create a online shop where we can get these gadgets built and
shipped

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oellegaard
Yeah, that'd be awesome! Or at least make some IKEA-like instructions on how
to assemble them - as a programmer I have no idea how to put these things
together. I would totally pay for that, like an arduino device, packed IKEA
style.

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prezjordan
This is great! Very ingenious design. How would it fare with thin wire?

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diminish
Wow nice prototype, does it make sense to use Arduino production?

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neonkiwi
If you have code for an Arudino, you can make a board that uses an AVR
microcontroller (made by Atmel[0]) with that same code. It may be possible to
use a cheaper AVR if you don't need the same functionality (eg, if you aren't
using hardware pulse width modulation, there are cheaper chips) with only
slight code modifications.

[0] <http://www.atmel.com>

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DanBC
Is there a 3d LOGO?

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gravitronic
Not sure if you mean purely software, but generally CNC machines are
instructed in a language called G-Code which is basically 3D LOGO (move
absolute/relative on a number of axis and some extra instructions to
start/stop spindle, etc)

