Author Archives: mechatronicsguy

So, masks have been in the news a lot recently for some strange reason. Probably most interesting; in the Czech Republic masks were made mandatory, but as there wasn’t enough existing masks in the supply chain, people had to create … Continue reading →

This is a lasercut version of the Bessel Functions, as a handy desk ornament: The helical diffraction theory, (and hence the Bessel functions) were the major key to solving the structure of DNA. In 1952 (well before the DNA structure … Continue reading →

Here’s a project I made almost accidentally on the way to a later design. I’ve wanted to make my own watch for a while now. It’d allow me to pick and choose all the features I really want, and it’s … Continue reading →

This is the ‘Confuse-O-Scope’, a device which allows you to enjoy all the fun of having mis-aligned RGB in real life! Guaranteed to cause both confusion and irritation in anyone that’s worked in TV, printing or theatre lighting! It uses … Continue reading →

This is a quick project I made to explore dichroic filters. I just love the colours that can be produced, and wanted a way to display it easily. In the last few years, these dichroic cubes have appeared on eBay. They’re used … Continue reading →

I recently saw this amazing idea from Darren Schwenke on Hackaday.io: https://hackaday.io/project/164732-mprt-modified-planetary-robotics-transmission Which is (so far as I know) a brand new type of gearbox, inspired by a well known concept called a  “Harmonic-Drive“. Harmonic drives have been around for … Continue reading →

This is a quick and dirty way to get a whole bunch (up to 17) small stepper motors working off a single arduino, with no extra circuitry whatsoever. Why would you want to do that? Maybe you want to make … Continue reading →

Unintentionally I’m going to continue my tradition of making projects involving rulers. I saw this picture online: https://imgur.com/t/aiko/mu96ohu and I thought it was too cute a technique not to try out for myself. I did a couple of minutes sketching in … Continue reading →

Here’s a quick project to make it easier to draw examples of interference patterns and wave behaviour. I call it Huygens’ Ruler: It’s based on the idea of Huygens’ principle, the idea that every point on a wavefront becomes the source … Continue reading →

Here’s something I was planning to make ages ago, as part of the Bloch Sphere project, but it slipped my mind. It’s a visual demonstration of how the Born Rule, which describes how complex ‘probability amplitudes’ are related to probability. … Continue reading →