At first glance, you’d think the Omnibot v3 was nothing more than a standard 3D-printed robotic platform, but you’d be wrong on both counts. There aren’t actually any 3D printed parts on the build, and while you could describe the platform as simplistic, calling it simple certainly doesn’t do the clever design justice. In the video after the break, creator [Michal] takes us through the process of designing and building this high-performance bot.

Build begins with huge amounts of time and effort in a CAD program that designs the Omnibot v3 with its four-wheel steering and ability to do fancy things like spin in place. With the CAD and 3D rendering out of the way, the process of transforming the digital to the physical began with a CNC router.

Instead of milling the individual components from a suitable material, [Michal] cut shapes. Those molds are only made for making silicone molds. Those silicone molds were then used to cast the actual parts with polyurethane resin. It’s these resin parts that make up the actual Omnibot v3, which is demonstrated manually at the end of the video.

All in all a nice project with a neat process. If we stopped here, everything would be mostly complete and you’d click through to the next great Hackaday article. But there is more to get here. You see, [Michal] is also co-behind the Guerrilla Guide to CNC and Resin Casting. In his own words, “CNC machining and resin casting are an underappreciated method of producing engineering-grade parts, but the process is fast, predictable and garage-friendly.” After seeing the results, we can’t help but agree.

By the way, before anyone in the comments “DUPE!” can yell, we already know. You see, we’ve presented the Guerrilla Guide to CNC and Resin Casting once before, almost exactly 11.5 years ago! It has since been updated and seems to be an absolute gold mine of information for anyone willing to walk in [Michal]’s shoes.

This post Omnibot shows off over a decade of CNC prowess

was original published at “https://hackaday.com/2022/04/23/omnibot-shows-off-over-a-decade-of-cnc-prowess/”