July & August Update

Hi Guys, it’s time for an update on what I’ve been up to.

My long term goal is very quiet multi-axis stroker devices, driven by brushless motors, and I have been using the summer lull to make some significant progress toward this. In the meantime, incremental improvements to SSR1 is the name of the game for my short term releases.

As you might imagine building a multi-axis device without the relative simplicity of servos is far from easy, and that’s before I add in the key design requirement that it has to be something that you guys can build for yourselves without maker super-skills. I therefore have to develop a device, or devices, that work well, and then I need to do what I did to SSR1, which is make is compact and simple.

I have two brushless device concepts in development at the moment: a 2-axis device (stroke + twist) and a full 6-axis SR6-like device. I initially thought that a brushless OSR2 would be a good first step, but I found that to recreate the way that an OSR2 moves would require reduction gears, which is something that I can avoid with my six-axis concept.

Modularity is going to be key to these devices. After all, it’s the modularity of servos that makes a complex device like the SR6 possible. This is why I’ve put a lot of time recently into developing and testing a brushless motor belt-driven linear actuator. It will be a lot easier to design a device that uses six of a standard design. Easier to build too! I also have a cunning variation on the linear actuator for the 2-axis design, which I think will be much more elegant than trying to come up with a twist module for SSR1. Likewise I don't want these devices to have complex wiring.

As you might imagine developing new devices isn’t something that I can do quickly! It’s therefore important to me that I release something each month for the maker ($8 tier). For the beginning of this month I released an alternate encoder mount, for those of you who have been finding it hard to get hold of the MT6701 breakout board that I specced in the build instructions. I’ve got some other interesting stuff for the SSR1 that I am currently tinkering with, including incorporating an OLED display and buttons into the design. For the beginning of September I have something else in mind to release, a fun little one-off side project I’ve been looking at. I won’t spoil it now–mostly just in case it doesn’t actually work as well as I’m expecting!

For my supporter ($2) tier members I think it’s important that I show you guys these actuators in action. I now have the equivalent of 1/3 of an SR6 working with these actuators so expect a livestream demo in the next few days.

If you want to see these new devices coming together, and everything else I’m working on day-to-day then the place to be is my Benefactor ($16) tier. This gives you access to a special area on Discord that includes my development stream, which is a kind of raw Tempest stream-of-consciousness. I also write it up into a monthly ~3,000 word Benefactors’ newsletter, which I have been keeping up for over three and a half years now.

Finally, the thing that I most want to stress is that I am really grateful to everyone who supports me. It’s you guys who pay the bills and allow me to put in the hours and days of work to create these amazing machines.

All the best,

Tempest