Longtailer Chris Anderson posts up about using some tools to create a rocket launcher from your favorite video game. 1. Capture a scene from your favorite videogame (HijackGL). 2. Import it into a CAD program and isolate an object you’d like to have. 3. Send it to a fabricator, either a 3D printer or a computer-controlled milling machine, and watch it emerge as a physical object. We’re still a few years away from doing this easily- but home fabricating isn’t that far away at all…Link.
6 thoughts on “DIY Rocket Launcher (from a Video Game)”
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I know I sound like a broken record, but depending on the size of the part you wish to make and your electronic fabrication skills you can get a desktop CNC mill for less than $3000. The Taig line (which I sell, but I don’t mean to be spamming, so I’m not including my URL)of CNC mills starts at around $2000 and if you get their CNC ready mill for around $1000 and make your own controller/stepper setup you can get it done for around $1500.
There are even cheaper options. I highly recommend getting on the cad-cam-edm-dro yahoogroup and seeing what sort of home cnc projects are working today. There is a revolution going on in home CNC right now! I am sort of evangelical about home shop machining, so forgive my enthusiasm.
Here is the latest project I did, a perfect involute spur gear:
http://mechanicalphilosopher.blogspot.com/2005/05/gear.html
No more buying gears for my projects…
(cross posting comment to the Long Tail blog as well…)
Home CNC is a wonderful thing, but it’s not yet quite as easy as feeding a machine a hunk of material and a CAD file and getting a useful part.
You’ve got to have CAM software that knows about the limitations of the tool. The best of this kind of software is quite expensive.
You also have to have a part that can be made by the machine. For example, a hollow hemisphere can’t be made on a 3 degree of freedom milling machine without doing more than one setup.
I’ve built my own 6 degree of freedom CNC machine from scratch, mostly using commonly available parts from the hardware store.
Very cool, have to love the hexapod! But I think it proves my point, which is that people are already doing home CNC, with very little money.
Boy do I wish there was a good open source 3+ axis CAM program…There are some very inexpensive ones, and a few free 2-1/2 axis ones.
As for the fact that you do need to learn machining technique and jig & fixture building, well everyone who wants to make things should learn machining techniques(if I were king of the world). I’m completely self-taught and I was making good parts manually within a couple of weeks of starting to learn.
On a 3 axis machine you do need two setups for a hemisphere, on a 4 axis only one.