Perhaps it’s a little too early to be expecting an onslaught of hacks made from ‘discarded 3D printer parts’, but we’ll take them as they come. Using standard RepRap 3D Printer parts, Air Hockey Robot creator/madman Jose Julio has created the ultimate Air Hockey DIY project that will certainly put to use those air hockey skills you developed at the video arcade during those breaks from Cruisin’ USA.
Made From 3D Printer Parts
Inspired by his daughter’s love for Air Hockey and his own love for robotics, Julio rounded up together RepRap parts including NEMA17 stepper motors, drivers, Arduino Mega, RAMPS, belts, bearings, rods, and printed pieces…particularly due to their advantage of being cheap and readily available.
For the actual table, Julio put together a basic table frame and powered the ‘Air’ component of the game with two pre-used PC fans. After some further iterations on the robot parts including swapping out axis rods for lightweight carbon tubes traditionally used for kites and installing a Playstation 3 camera for tracking movement, Julio coded from the ground up with Marlin (RepRap’s Firmware):
The rest—as they say—is history…and Jose definitely deserves a nomination for a Dad of the Year Award.
For those looking for to build their own Air Hockey Robot, Julio was kind of enough to both supply a build manual (with pictures!) as well as upload the code to Github.
(Images via Jose Julio)
