I recently started watching The Ben Heck show on YouTube. I watched one episode where Ben was making an portable XBox. In this episode, Ben scanned in the motherboard in order to locate holes and features in order to create the cut files for the box. First, I thought scanning the motherboard was a great idea and wish I had thought of that myself! Anyway, the need to locate mounting holes and such comes up often and one other way to do that is with a CMM (coordinate measuring machine).
My show idea is for Ben to build a CMM. I think it could be done relatively easily with either encoders or even with servos (by tapping into the pot inside the servo). Of course, there would still be the issue of translating the coordinates generated by the CMM into some usable file type but that should be possible. Things could be made simpler by just making a 2D CMM instead of a full 3D arm.
Anyway, I think a CMM would be a handy little device for people to use, and something that could open up another way to do a little bit of reverse engineering.
By the way, the show is awesome!
Thanks,
Kelly
