PERSONAL ROBOTICS
■ FIGURE 3. Notice the air conditioner unit in the top right
corner? Lights, computers, soldering irons, and other
equipment give off quite a bit of heat!
■ FIGURE 4. Storage rack to the left of my workbench holds
partially assembled projects, broken “junk” pieces, parts,
and (in many cases) inspiration.
has to be able to support the
creating or inventing of things that
only exist in vague concepts or rough
sketches. In many cases, I don’t know
exactly what I will need till I’m done
with a build! Have a look at the
Ponginator (N&V December ‘07), the
RoboSpinArt machine (N&V January
‘08), the Ping Pong Printer (N&V
February ‘08), or the Power Flowers
(July ‘08) for good examples of what
I’m talking about (see Resources for
links to videos).
I KNOW IT’S HERE
SOMEWHERE ...
When looking at the pictures
that came in from all around the
country for the first Habitat column,
I started to wonder ... am I really that
much less organized than other folks,
or did some of you just clean up your
workbenches before sending in the
photos? The bottom line is that my
workspace is typically a visual
cacophony of parts, tools,
documentation, media, wire, and
well ... just have a look at the pictures
of my bench in Figures 2 and 3 and
you can see quite clearly.
Somehow though, I can usually
lay my hands on just about anything
I need. I seem to have a “relational”
memory in that I can remember
approximately where something is
“buried” and then home in on that
area of my workspace to find it
(Figure 4). I try to keep like-parts in
the same place so if I can’t find
exactly what I set out to find, I can
usually find something similar (Figure
5). Although I drool over the highly
organized workspaces such as those
submitted for Part 1, I imagine that if
I were to create one, it would quickly
become just as chaotic as my existing
workspace is. I do try, though. For
example, before I begin a project, I
start by cleaning up my workbench
and putting all the tools and parts
away. However, when I’m actually
creating stuff (Figure 6), I’m just too
busy to put things back carefully
where they belong. My wife thinks
it’s laziness ... I blame entropy. But
■ FIGURE 5. Main storage rack just outside the door to
the 60 square-foot “shop” hold items too big to fit inside
the shop.
■ FIGURE 6. The workbench at project start-up sporting
the parts that would eventually become an animatronic
haunt controller.
September 2008 79
