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Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD

paulbupejr.com

11–20 of 138 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD

#11
post #5

That's super cool and I hope you don't mind a little bit of unsolicited feedback but the first question everyone's asking is "what does it do?" At present the blog post starts out with two paragraphs talking about the format of the blog post and the applications but not what the sensor actually measures.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD

#13
post #12

This is really really cool, but why does it depend on TPU? Wouldn't it work with regular fiber optic? Or does it come down to economics?

It doesn't! I heavily used TPU to drive home the point that it can work with almost any light-transmitting fiber. I used PMMA optical fiber for the more fine demos.

Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD

#15
post #10
post #5

That's super cool and I hope you don't mind a little bit of unsolicited feedback but the first question everyone's asking is "what does it do?" At present the blog post starts out with two paragraphs talking about the format of the blog post and the applications but not what the sensor actually measures.

Good point -- I need to better explain what "bend localization" means on a more practical level pretty early on.

Yeah. I guess in layman's terms it's a long squishy cable that knows where it's being bent.

Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD

#17

Paul, what an amazing project, this is what hacking is all about. Congratulations! Definitely try to explore the commercial side of your invention. It wouldn't hurt to talk to an IP lawyer, if you're still in Uni they usually have people there doing this and you can just go talk to them, free of charge (for you!). I'm generally against the idea of patents, mainly because of people who came to know to game the system…

My (former) school is actually already in the process of doing that! My dissertation committee thought it was novel enough that it needed some IP protection and encouraged me to pursue that.

Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD

#20
post #10
post #5

That's super cool and I hope you don't mind a little bit of unsolicited feedback but the first question everyone's asking is "what does it do?" At present the blog post starts out with two paragraphs talking about the format of the blog post and the applications but not what the sensor actually measures.

Good point -- I need to better explain what "bend localization" means on a more practical level pretty early on.

> This means the sensor can tell you where you bent it, with a predefined (and coarse) resolution.

> OptiGap’s application is mainly within the realm of soft robotics, which typically involves compliant (or ‘squishy’) systems, where the use of traditional sensors is often not practical.

This explanation is already quite clear. If I understood correctly, by "predefined resolution" you mean that it detects which silicone sleeve was bent on a tube with a series of them, correct?

Can you provide more concrete examples for how you envision it being used? The first application that comes to mind is sensing how fingers bend in a glove controller.

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