I want a plastic material I can shape change, erase and shape change repeatedly.
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M$5 Answers
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M$
fill a wide, deep baking pan about halfway with coffee grounds or sand, then cover it very loosely with a thick garbage bag and use a vaccuum source to suck the air out. any shape the sand has been molded to will become rigid until the vacuum source is removed, at which point it will turn back to loose material.
so if you had a series of positive mold plates, you could lower it into the sand, apply vacuum. shape held.
done with shape- release vacuum, vibrate to reset grounds to flat.
To truly answer your question, you need to add some more info-
-how rigid does the plastic need to be after it has taken a shape?
-how quickly does it need to move?
-how precise does it need to be?
-what is being done on this surface? is it for molding? machining?
- what kind of surface area are you looking for?
A few years back i read an article in popular science where they showed a startup company that had a machine like what you describe. It was a matrix of several hundred linear actuators arranged vertically on a table, like a bed of nails. Resting on the actuators was a thick mat of layered silicone. By arranging different heights of the actuators, it added pits and peaks to the mat, which were smooth and fluid because of the silicone.
what you want can easily be done, and has before- but it's either not gonna be cheap, or it's going to need a bit more of a hands on approach.
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M$
- With out knowing beans about brail, I'd guess about 1 dot per 2mm.
- Rigid enough to feel and withstand touch and rubbing.
- As fast as someone might read brail. I would think 1 to 3 cm per second.
- I think the resolution would need to be in the 2mm range.
- Er, it's for brail reading.
- I was thinking one line of brail so about 15 cm by about 4 cm.
I agree, these things can be expensive (hence why I thought it might be fun to try and make a cheap ubiquitous one that everyone can afford). So my thought was to have a small writing station and to roll the media out in the form of a small conveyor belt like device. I had pondered a number of different ways to deform the belt. I could use magnets (cool sounding name: Magnetophoresis) or electricity (also cool sounding: Electrophoresis). At least the electricity solution sounded over the top. I think most use about 100 volts for this. A bit much. Magnets might work, but I think it will be tricky to set up the field to shape then hold the shape of the belt. So I started to wonder about plastics and using thermal energy to write and erase bumps on the belt.
Enjoy,
Ray
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M$
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M$
I like the idea (and the free sample for ~$5 is tempting), but I wanted something that resembled a small conveyor belt when in its relaxed or in a stable state. I think ShapeLock will be completely hard when cooled and not something I could keep under control when warm. Recall I want to have a minimal / cheap machine manipulate it.
Could you have solid individual cells like small cube containers which dont change shape, but containing a little bit of shapelock in each with just the top explosed. An array of cube containers along your conveyor belt. Run that through a hot tank of water, stamp it, then have it run through a cold water tank to solidify it and avoid burning Helen Keller's fingers.
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/10/25/jamming-robot-gripper-gets-official-article-published-pnas
It uses ordinary coffee grounds inside an ordinary balloon to contain them. With even a weak vacuum the coffee grounds compress together to hold their shape. Release the seal, the air floods back in returning to blank shape.
I can't name a reformable plastic like you are asking for. However I theorise that you could have a belt with individual cells of that along it. Press it against a mould in the braille pattern that you want, and at the same time have the opening pass a hose to your vacuum pump (fish tank?).
Whether you go with that or not, another suggestion is that you can press each braille letter into your plastic/coffee grounds using just one motor. If you have a column sitting 90 degrees to your conveyor belt, with all the letters preformed on it, you can drive that up and down using a rack and pinion + servo for example. Just have it stop at the correct letter placement above your plastic.
Going further than that (and really really cheap and low tech), you could also have the whole belt covered in those next to each other side by side along the belt.
1. At the start of the cycle each column containing all the characters get funnelled into a
central position across the belt.
2. The belt rotates a little. A rack attached to the letter column (as in rack & pinion) slides over a gear which a servo can push up or down to locate the desired character.
3. The belt rotates a little more. The rack gears slide into a non-moving rail which lock the column into place while it slides past the reader.
The cover most of this so the human reader has a groove that the displayed characters float along. Confusing? See how you go with understanding that... will make pics if necessary.
Anyhoo. If you do happened to find a promising solution let us know. That's a really interesting project you have brought up.
The brain slug
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M$
Yes, I did saw the coffee ground gripper.
I like your idea of using a fish pump. It had occurred to me as well. However I only think this it feasible (quick enough) if combined with a vacuum reservoir and a number of solenoids air valves.
Hot and cold baths are problematic and hardly portable. I was thinking of a Peltier device. We could use both the hot and cold that is developed to form then stabilize the plastic respectively. This way a temperature differential can be created in less then several cubic centimetres of space solely by electrical current.
However, it worries me this "contraption" is getting complex leading to many difficulties including a high price. Recall I wanted something inexpensive. There are plenty of (expensive) portable reading devices available. So, interesting or not, another several hundred dollar unit would make little difference.
- Keep thinking.
Another thought... plastacine?
