cube building block shown from below
The cube building block is 4.5 mm on a side with 1 mm legs which fit into the block below it. To manufacture these cubes, I am using an inexpensive CNC milling machine from MAXNC which connects to a PC:
The cubes are milled out of 1/4" clear lucite plastic with a 1/16" endmill.
After fabricating the cubes, I also use the CNC mill as an initial manipulator arm for placing cubes. Here is a (kinda blurry) picture of this setup:
The white plastic mounted on the mill is a polyethylene assembly platform. There is also a polyethylene manipulator hand mounted where the milling bit belongs. Here is a closeup:
In the assembly process, there is a cube waiting in the "standby area" which presumably just cam from the parts bin. The polyethylene hand is dipped in the glue reservoir containing methylene chloride, which is very watery and doesn't gum up the hand. Methylene chloride will only bond lucite to lucite, but does not bond polyethylene. So when the hand is placed on the standby cube, the cube sticks only by liquid surface tension.
Next, the hand dips the cube in the same glue reservoir, then slides it into position on the workpiece. The cube sticks more strongly to the other lucite cubes than it does to the hand, so when the hand is removed, the cube remains and is bonded due to the glue. Note that the platform is polyethylene, so that the workpiece, wet with methylene chloride, only sticks by surface tension, and is easily lifted off at the end of assembly.
Here is RealVideo of an animation which clearly shows one such cube placement step. Here is RealVideo of a movie (not as clear) of the same operation on the actual setup, shown in real time. You may have to download the RealPlayer G2.
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