Welcome to section view, a newsletter for curious engineers and hardware people. Brought to you with ❤️ by the Five Flute team.
Shane Wighton builds a robot to solve a 5000 piece all white puzzle
“If you do the math, it should take about two years of 18 hour days to solve this puzzle.”
It’s just pure nerd sniping lunacy in this one….
That said there are lots of nice little mechanical design tricks going on that make this build worth watching. I like how he uses an RC car shock as part of a series elastic actuation system for picking up puzzle pieces. Check the full video here. Recommended!
Bonus: More on series elastic actuators from the ReNeu Robotics Lab. Definitely a nifty design pattern to add to your bag of tricks.
Hertzian stress calculator
I’ve opened up Shigleys and made hertzian stress calculation spreadsheets waaaay too many times in my career. This week I found a nice free web calculator for contact stress problems so you don’t have to make the same mistake I’ve made.
New engineering article: bearings and bushings
Our latest design focused article covers bearing and bushing design considerations as well as a brief overview of common bearings and bushings, with a focus on construction and practical applications. A must read for jr. engineers and a great refresher if you’re getting back into rotating machinery design with complex load conditions.
3D Design Review Alpha
We’re working with a select group of teams to develop our 3D design review platform. If you want to try the alpha as soon as it is released, you can join the waitlist here. If you still run design reviews with slide decks you might want to check it out 🙂.
❤️ Brought to you by the engineers at Five Flute.
