[DIYbio] Re: Cubespawn group is working on parallel concepts now

From: John Griessen <jo...@industromatic.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 8:52 AM
Subject: Cubespawn group is working on parallel concepts now
To: biocurious-ro...@googlegroups.com

Patrick D'H wrote:
"- 180 x 90 cm sounds very large - that's 6 x 3 feet, and would take up an entire lab bench! Could you get away with 3 x 3 ft, until you have most of the kinks worked out? Expanding the length of the gantry afterwards should be reasonably straightforward.

- Were you guys planning to design a separate PCR machine as well? "

There is another project considering what control hardware and software to use for modular
open manufacturing robots right now that you al should consider cross pollination with.
It's called Cubespawn.  They're discussing using ROS, ARM platforms like R-Pi, SmoothieBoard
and The basic idea is starting off with modules that are made from T slotted extrusion
with overall dimensions of 300mm increments.

http://cubespawn.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
"System Overview

The CubeSpawn system consists of Cubical frames made from aluminum T-slot extrusion.
The modular frames are built to enclose various manufacturing machines, such as a CNC milling machine, or a 3-D printer, or an assembly robot. The frames are based on a consistent dimensional framework of 300mm increments and can be linked together, each is an Ethernet appliance, with integrated power connections.

In this way, up to the limits of the ratings in each branch, cubes can be joined together to form "production lines""