LumenLabs CNC

I was really interested to see the CNC based projects underway at LumenLabs. Traditionally LumenLabs supplied LCD projector kits - yes kits - for the hobbyist. But BrainChild - LumenLabs founder - is now branching into creating CNC robot kits.

The results so far are quite impressive with a miniature CNC gantry style robot available in kit form quite soon. This looks about the size of a Roland MX-15 but one quarter of the price. It doesn't look like you'd get much of a spindle on there though so I'm not sure it'd be up to cutting sheet aluminium - which is what I'd like.

But it's BrainChild's current project that really appeals - the much larger RoGR. This looks like a very cool CNC tool with lots of applications - I particularly like that BrainChild notes 'Chess partner' as a possible use case. Some of the kit parts are already available but I'd be very interested to see the completed plans. Expected price is around $2000 which would seem to be extremely good value if you don't mind putting it together yourself.

Make envy

I had planned to make a hobbyist robot arm based clock but it looks as though someone has beaten me to it. There are lots of examples out there that used commercial arms but I found few that used the cheaper variety such as my Lynxmotion 5-DOF arm.

That's the problem with getting something new on Make - it's terrifically difficult to come up with something new, and when you do you have to hurry!

Thankfully I still have my XXXXXXXXXXXXXX idea that doesn't even produce any hits on Google. I guess that now I should really go and order some Arduino boards and get soldering...

TechShop review

I found a good review of TechShop here. They really seem to have a nice workshop with some very cool tools - if only they'd open one in Hackney so that I could build a robot army!