Archive for category photo

in the future, robots will have arms

Posted by Michael Beach in metrology, photo, prototype on August 10th, 2011

the kind of arms to pick up things, not like the puny arms that a T-Rex has. That’s the word we hear from Bec Conrad, who’s taking a break from her work with animatronic dinosaurs (see this link here: http://www.dinosaurlive.com/funstuff/).

Bec is helping us make this motion stage, based on a salvaged DVD player, a platform for some new precision products. With an encoder capable of 15um resolution from Austria Micro, and controls theory support from Bec, we look forward to using this prototype in our shop to improve our optical measurements.

A few prototype motion stages getting outfit with precision encoders.

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Arduino motor control

Posted by Michael Beach in how-to, parts, photo, prototype, tools, vendors on August 2nd, 2011

We’re using some Arduino boards for a variety of projects – to run the motion stage (25um resolution), to test LED colors, to run an oven for testing temperature compensation electronics. The add on boards (‘shields’ – since that means something else to me, I have trouble with that name) are a big help. We’ve been using SparkFun as our Arduino parts vendor, and we like ‘em.

Ardumoto 'shield' for the Arduino controls our motion stage prototype. It has capacity to control 2 motors. Photo courtesy Bec Conrad.

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Light uniformity testing

Posted by Michael Beach in how-to, metrology, optics, photo, prototype, tech notes, tools on July 15th, 2009

For both a clinical test microscope, and a home theater HDTV projection display, the light from the source must be quite uniform.

To test some non-imaging illumination optics, we set up our digital camera, and wrestled with the RAW data files from the camera. Most cameras have some ability to ‘see’ infra-red, so we can also test the pattern from the remote control output, or for other purposes.