Accessory Base for Bridge Edition Handibots

Mark Evans has been interested in building his own -- and I thought I'd provide what help I could by publishing what I'd worked out for a customer a while back.
I'm trying to flesh out all the "DIY" info for our products on the handibot support page -- and at the bottom, I've got unofficial products such as the Bridge Ed. Accessory Base -- check it out: [sites.google.com]

There's a little more info I need to publish, like the bill of materials for fasteners and how I do the pivoting joints on the levers -- but I'm taking up valuable table space at the local diner right now so I'll have to get back to it later today! This is a start!

I can’t thank you enough for this, right now we are locked out of the documents though as the permittions is not public.

Oops. I wish I could make files on my google drive public by default! Fixed it.

Is there a Bill of Materials for this neat project?

Might be able to get to it today--if you own a Bridge Edition tool, you'll be familiar with the way I use rivet nuts as bearings for the rotating joints in the linkage -- but I want to explain it a bit better for people who haven't looked closely at the clamps on the Handibot Bridge base.

Thanks, Brian,
But I will need to depart from the traditional blue and yellow HDPE as suppliers local to me in Australia will not cut these colours to size. They want to sell me a whole sheet of each, so black and white it shall be. Can't get 1/2" thickness either, but hopefully 12mm. If needs be I will go to 10mm. I will need to check if the file needs any modification! I will cut a proto in 5 ply first.

There are a few areas where a stack of HDPE parts slot into another HDPE bracket, The width of that slot would just need to be adjusted based on the new thickness of material you're using.
Other problem may be that the little HDPE "locating pins" that are meant to slot into the base of the Bridge Tool are spaced just right by the material thickness--you may need to add another piece to space them apart so that they match the bridge base. I can post the design file for the Bridge parts as well so you can snap measurements.
Busy morning so far--but hoping to get it all done and have some time in the afternoon to play with this.

I've updated the "Build your own" page with a short list of purchased materials. There aren't many. I've included vendors and links to pages where you can purchase them. Outside of the US, you may need to find alternate vendors -- but the pages I link to have detailed specs so you'll be able to compare to local vendor's offerings.

Gotta work on the linkage assembly guide now.

The assembly guide for the tablet holder includes similar linkages -- so you can check that out to get the gyst.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2019 03:52PM by Brian Owen, ShopBot.

I simply can't express how thankful I am for the help here. I've ordered the parts I need to get up and running and after that, I will get to work on this. I don't know yet if I will build to your spec. or just use this as inspiration but either way it is a huge help.

Definitely don't think my way was the best way--part of the reason it was designed the way it was--was so that it could be shipped in the same box as the bridge edition base. The little notches in the feet clip onto the bridge base frame extrusion and let it sit low enough to fit in the box I ship the base in.

Dust control was something I wanted to work on. I thought it would be cool to surround the turned part with a kind of half-pipe with little vents on either side. Hook up a shopvac to that and create this downward air flow that would trap dust as it came off the part. The first few attempts at that didn't really seem to help much with the dust.