Texas A&M Students 3D Print A Unique Robotic DJ

IMTS

Share this Article

robot-that-can-scratch-mainRico Balakit is a computer engineering student at Texas A&M University with access to the 3D printing studio at the Mechanical Engineering Department, and he quite literally likes building things from scratch.

Balakit has built a “robot DJ” from 3D printed parts which is capable of gating a crossfader and manipulating a vinyl record in time with a given beat.

Rico Balakit

Rico Balakit

His idea was to create a robotic system which is able to perform “turntablist scratches” with high precision and synchronized with Traktor. He said the goal was that the device could perform in two modes: first as a reliable “Instant Gratification Scratching” system where buttons are assigned pre-programmed scratch routines, and second the turntable equivalent of a “player piano” which employs music loops and random patterns.

The system is made up of two mechanisms. The first, a simple crank powered by a single servo and attached to the mixer, controls a crossfader.

The second component of the system is a swinging arm powered by two servos. One servo pivots directly over the turntable’s axis of rotation and controls the “scratching” motion, and the other servo controls the arm if it’s pushing down on the record.

Balakit says most of the electronics were found on Amazon, an Arduino Mega2560 and the Sunfounder Project Starter Kit among them. The servo motors and servo mounting hardware came from a local Hobby Town store and the other “raw materials” were found.CJ7rdnWUwAApIpn.jpg large

The 3D printed parts for the later prototypes – and very likely for the finished robots – were printed out at the Texas A&M University lab.

“I was taking a Materials Science midterm early and after completing it, I had a discussion with my professor Tanil Ozkan and his student Yasushi Mizuno, who are setting up an Open 3D Printing Studio for students to use,” Balakit says. “They liked the idea and decided to help me out with my project by printing the parts for me; It’s fantastic being able to design a part and send it off in the evening and receive it right before my next class.”

gTGT2Kx-670x300Balakit’s interest in robotics began at a very young age, though his DJing is a more recent interest he took up about three years ago.

“I’ve had a few people asking why I didn’t go with a purely software solution – such as emulating turntablist maneuvers via MIDI input – which indeed would be more reliable and easier to do,” he says. “I just find the mechanical mechanisms very fun to design, and it’s extremely rewarding to not just hear a perfect output, but see the action behind it physically happening in front of me. That, and robots are just really cool.”

If you’d like to see complete documentation for the Turntablist Robot, you can check out Balakits’ site here.

What do you think of this 3D printed DeeJay? Do you think you’ll see any of these in the clubs in the near future? Let us know in the 3D Printed DeeJay forum thread on 3DPB.com.

 

Share this Article


Recent News

Will There Be a Desktop Manufacturing Revolution outside of 3D Printing?

Know Your Würth: CEO AJ Strandquist on How Würth Additive Can Change 3D Printing



Categories

3D Design

3D Printed Art

3D Printed Food

3D Printed Guns


You May Also Like

Featured

Pressing Refresh: What CEO Brad Kreger and Velo3D Have Learned About Running a 3D Printing Company

To whatever extent a business is successful thanks to specialization, businesses will nonetheless always be holistic entities. A company isn’t a bunch of compartments that all happen to share the...

Würth Additive Launches Digital Inventory Services Platform Driven by 3D Printing

Last week, at the Additive Manufacturing Users’ Group (AMUG) Conference in Chicago (March 10-14), Würth Additive Group (WAG) launched its new inventory management platform, Digital Inventory Services (DIS). WAG is...

Featured

Hypersonic Heats Up: CEO Joe Laurienti on the Success of Ursa Major’s 3D Printed Engine

“It’s only been about 24 hours now, so I’m still digesting it,” Joe Laurienti said. But even via Zoom, it was easy to notice that the CEO was satisfied. The...

Featured

3D Printing’s Next Generation of Leadership: A Conversation with Additive Minds’ Dr. Gregory Hayes

It’s easy to forget sometimes that social media isn’t reality. So, at the end of 2023, when a burst of doom and gloom started to spread across the Western world’s...