Hotplate

“Hotplate” is a tool changer for mid-sized machines - it should allow us to share tools across motion platforms, to accomplish the “fab lab in a box” goals and also enable multi-process development (print and mill) as well as rapid development of new automation tools / processes.

The toolchanger is kinematic, but a different design than the most common, which looks like this:

Instead, this design uses a ‘pinching’ mechanism - imagine a lobster claw picking up a spindle - haha. Here’s a video of it in action:

To explain, I shot this tiny video:

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