Open Beam Extrusions and Videos

We've been having lots of fun with Openbeam, building all kinds of handy contraptions out of it. Today's issue of Hey Look It's New Stuff covers a big chunk of our stock.

	OpenBeam Extrusion - 1000mm Length $175.00 If you find it annoying to cut the 1m open beam extrusions down to size - you can now rejoice! Open beam precut lengths are here! Offered in a conveniently packaged kit, these precut pieces are ideal for designing all kinds of interesting structures. It is available in both black and silver.
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 30mm $1.00
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 45mm $1.00
	OpenBeam Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 60mm $1.25
	OpenBeam Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 90mm $1.50
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 120mm $1.80
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 150mm $2.10
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 210mm $2.75
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 270mm $3.30
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 300mm $3.65
	OpenBeam Extrusion - 1000mm Length $10.00
	9V Snap to 2.1mm Barrel jack Cable $2.95 Well, this one is not OpenBeam, but we were too excited to have them in finally to leave them 'til the next week. Need a battery for your Arduino that is high enough to regulate the voltage to down to a solid 5V? Well here comes the 9V Snap to 2.1mm Barrel Jack Cable to your rescue! It allows you to plug in 9V and 7.2V rechargeable batteries to anything with a 2.1mm Barrel receptacle on it.

And what would you make out of all these neat little pieces, you will ask? Our latest is the robot chassis that we showed off a couple days ago. This particular revision shows our attempt at mounting laser-cut wheel-legs ("Whegs"?) and having it scramble across a particularly nasty Lego landscape. If you wanna sneak a peek at yet another iteration of the chassis we are working on, visit our Flickr photostream.

In other news, we use lots of ribbon cable and often need it in precision cuts of 8"-lengths. Using OpenBeam parts, an Arduino with CMDR shield, and a stepper motor we created this super handy machine you can see below. You can find a bit of project details in the video description.

We were also getting really tired of endlessly counting screws. So we got an automatic screwdriver feeder, and bent it into our will by hacking it with Arduino that controls the current and reads the sensor input. We also built a rotating carousel for catching the parts using some handy Openbeam components.

And that's it for the OpenBeam issue today. Huge kudos go out to Terence Tam for kickstarting this cool construction material!

PS- Just a quick reminder that you can order your custom Useless Box top. More details in one of the previous posts.