We’re thrilled to announce Arduino App Lab 0.10, our biggest release yet. With this update, you can now build applications alongside an AI agent that actively works on your project, not one that just answers questions about it.

Powered by MCP and integrated with App CLI, Agentic Mode understands your workspace, creates and edits files, runs your app, and interprets errors as they happen. It has deep knowledge of App Lab, Apps, Bricks, and Sketches.

Alongside Agentic Mode, App Lab 0.10 also introduces Language Server support for code completion and navigation, a streamlined way to connect your board to Arduino Cloud and a restructured Examples library.  Here’s a breakdown.

The big one: Agentic Mode

^{Agentic Mode and session panel in Arduino App Lab 0.10}

Open Arduino App Lab and you’ll notice a new button at the bottom of the screen “Agentic Mode.” Through its MCP integration with App CLI, it understands your workspace and actively works on your project.

If you need a reminder, MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI models interact with external tools and systems. Rather than just generating text, an MCP-connected agent can invoke tools, read state, and take actions, in this case, through Arduino App CLI.

It’s what allows Agentic Mode to go beyond simple conversation and actually operate on your project.

Agentic Mode can create and edit files, run your App, stop it when needed, and interpret errors as they happen. Ask it to build a feature and you can watch it assemble the project step by step, instead of handing you a wall of code to copy and paste. Watch this demo as an example. 

Agentic Mode works on a Bring-Your-Own-Key basis: you authenticate with your AI provider of choice, keeping you in control of your API usage and costs. Claude is supported at first, with more providers coming soon.

Faster code editing with Language Server Support

Arduino App Lab 0.10 integrates a Language Server (not available in SBC Mode on UNO Q) that brings IDE-quality features to your Sketches and scripts: autocomplete, auto-formatting, hover documentation, “go to definition”, and “find all references” work across Arduino sketches, Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

^{The new Language Server allows Inline code definition}

Connect your board to Arduino Cloud, right from Settings

You can now register your Arduino^® UNO Q board with Arduino Cloud directly from the Settings page, no need to leave Arduino App Lab. Once registered, your board is ready for IoT-enabled Apps.

^{Provision UNO Q for Arduino Cloud directly from the Arduino App Lab’s device settings page.}

A clearer path through Examples

The Examples catalog has been restructured into three tiers so you always know where to start and where to go next:

1. Inspirations: more than examples, full blown Applications that showcase what the board can really do. 
2. Examples: the fundamentals, taught through focused topics like LEDs, matrices, and the Bridge API.
3. Bricks Examples:  small, interactive apps that each focus on a single Brick’s functionalities, so you can see one building block in action at a time.

New inspiration page to show the full potential of Arduino UNO Q

Download Arduino App Lab 0.10

Update Arduino App Lab to 0.10.0. 

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

Resource

• Purchase the Arduino UNO Q.

Arduino and UNO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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Arduino^® Project Hub has featured a lot of DIY handheld consoles on this blog over the years. Most of them are impressive, and most of them require at least some custom hardware – a purpose-designed PCB, a specialized connector, a part you can only get from one supplier. They’re great projects, but they can feel just out of reach for makers who don’t have a deep electronics background.

Zalmotek’s retro game console is different, because it’s based on UNO Q. Every single component can be bought from a standard online retailer and connected together. It even uses mostly premade cables and wires – which means zero soldering. The only custom parts are a 3D-printed enclosure and buttons, held together with heat-set inserts for a clean, professional feel. It’s as impressive as it is accessible, and that’s our favorite combination.

What’s on the BOM

The hardware list is relatively short. An UNO Q 4GB board does the heavy lifting. An Arduino^® UNO Media Carrier provides the physical connections – DSI for the display, 3.5mm audio for the speaker – without requiring any custom wiring between components. Three Arduino^® Modulino Buttons handle the face buttons. A Modulino Joystick handles navigation. Just add a display, UPS module, a small speaker, and a USB-C PD adapter to round out the build.

Whether it comes from inside or outside the Arduino ecosystem, everything connects and works seamlessly because the UNO Media Carrier handles the bridging. No breadboard, no custom firmware, no fighting with drivers.

Where the dual-brain of UNO Q really shines

Here’s where things get technically interesting – and where the UNO Q stands out as more than just an SBC substitute.

The STM32 microcontroller on the board monitors all the control inputs from the Modulino nodes. It then passes those inputs to the Linux side, where a Python daemon translates them into standard USB gamepad commands. That clean handoff means RetroArch – the open-source multi-system emulator that powers the gaming experience in Zalmotek’s project – receives perfectly standard controller input, with no unusual configuration and no custom emulator patches.

The Linux side runs RetroArch natively, outputting to the DSI display over the Media Carrier and audio through the 3.5mm jack. Game ROMs live on the onboard eMMC storage. The full experience – multiple emulation cores, controller input, display output, audio – runs on a single board without a separate compute module or any additional hardware.

This is the dual-brain architecture at its most elegant: the MCU handles what it’s best at (low-latency hardware I/O), the MPU handles what it’s best at (running complex Linux applications), and the bridge between them makes the whole thing feel seamless to build and to use.

No NPCs allowed

The finished console is, as Zalmotek acknowledges, a little chunky – that’s the honest trade-off when you build from modules rather than a custom PCB. The beauty, however, is anyone can build it! 

Zalmotek has published everything you need on the Arduino Project Hub: full hardware list, assembly walkthrough, software setup guide, and the complete source code on GitHub. The tutorial is thorough and beginner-friendly, and the Arduino^® App Lab environment makes the software side of the setup smooth as well.

You can replicate their project without a hiccup, but don’t stop there. Swap the display for a different size. Redesign the enclosure. Add a Modulino Movement node for motion controls. Build your own game in Godot and run it on the hardware you made. And, of course, pay it forward by sharing on Project Hub what you come up with!

P.S. If the handheld form factor isn’t what you’re after, it’s also worth checking out the UNO Q Arcade Bundle we launched recently – for a similar approach configured for a desktop arcade cabinet with a custom controller.

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Pen plotters are kind of neat, if you like the idea of marking paper without resorting to printing. But almost every pen plotter out there is basically the same: Cartesian movement in two axes, with some sort of actuation in Z to lift the pen. This DIY pen plotter built by András Vujovits is different and includes some very unique features.

Unlike most other pen plotters, this one has delta kinematics. In two dimensions like this, that means it has two parallel arm linkages, each with an endpoint on a carriage riding on a rail. By moving the two carriages relative to each other and the bed, it can position the end effector anywhere within its work envelope — it just takes some fancy math.

On top of that, it has a tool changer. That lets it swap between pens, markers, and potentially other kinds of tools (maybe a drag knife?). And on top of that, it has a paper feed mechanism that pulls fresh paper across the bed, like a miniature treadmill. 

Most of the pen plotter’s parts were 3D-printed. The linear rails, belts, and various fasteners are all off-the-shelf parts.

For control, Vujovits chose to pair an Arduino^® Nano with a GRBL shield equipped with stepper drivers. Standard software won’t produce G-code appropriate for this machine, because the delta kinematics are completely foreign. For that reason, Vujovits developed his own software that takes an image file, creates toolpaths, and spits out files. It makes an XML file, which is basically a custom save file. It also generates a G-code file, which contains the motor commands that take the delta kinematics into account. From there, a standard G-code sender will get the file on to the plotter and it is ready to draw.

Arduino and Nano are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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We are thrilled to announce the release of version 0.90.0 of the ArduinoCore-zephyr. This is a major milestone: we are officially exiting the beta phase and marking the core as stable. Achieving this goal is the culmination of months of testing, architectural refinement, and community feedback.

As we establish this core as our primary framework for advanced hardware, we are also beginning the deprecation phase for the corresponding legacy cores based on mbedOS, which has just now reached End of Life status.

Join us in this next chapter! Compile your existing sketches with version 0.90.0, and let us know how it performs.

Expanded board and hardware support

Welcome, Nano RP2040 Connect! The Arduino^® Nano RP2040 Connect board officially joins our lineup. You can now leverage the full RTOS power of Zephyr on RP2040 hardware with standard Arduino API compatibility.

SD card support for the Arduino^® Portenta H7 and C33 boards. Native SD card support is now enabled for both Portenta H7 and Portenta C33, making it simple to log data and host local files on external memory.

PDM library support. Official support for the PDM library on the Nano 33 BLE board is here, unlocking digital microphone input for audio sampling, noise detection, and edge AI voice processing.

Universal automatic loader sync

With version 0.90.0, automatic loader-and-sketch synchronization is now enabled across all supported boards. The core automatically verifies and handles loader updates behind the scenes during every sketch upload. This means you can simply open the Arduino^® IDE, connect a board running a sketch based on mbedOS, switch to the new Zephyr-based core, and upload your sketch. The IDE will automatically update the loader as needed to ensure compatibility with Zephyr.

If you are running Zephyr for the first time, check out our step-by-step guide here.

Full hardware compatibility list

• Arduino^® UNO Q board
• Portenta H7
• Portenta C33
• Arduino^® Opta microPLC
• Arduino^® GIGA R1 WiFi board
• Nano Matter board
• Nano RP2040 Connect (New!)
• Nano 33 BLE
• Arduino^® Nicla Sense ME module
• Nicla Vision module

How to get started

To update your environment: open the Arduino IDE, search for “zephyr” in the Board Manager, and install version 0.90.0.

Thank you!

This stable milestone wouldn’t be possible without our community. Check out the full release notes on GitHub, report issues, and help us build the next era of Arduino on Zephyr!

Arduino, GIGA R1, Nano, Nicla, Opta, Portenta, and UNO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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Sometimes, the most exciting projects we come across don’t come from well-funded labs or established companies – but rather from teenagers in a workshop, figuring things out because they genuinely want to solve something real.

That’s exactly the energy behind Yadro Team – an eight-member robotics group based in Uzbekistan, most of them under 20, founded in 2024 by Aziz Sayitkulov, who was all of 18 years old when he started it. Aziz has been doing robotics for six years, and beyond leading the team he also teaches Arduino and robotics to other students. Because when you find something that changes the way you see the world, why not share it?

Before we get to their current project, it’s worth mentioning what first put Yadro Team on our radar: a pair of smart glasses for visually impaired people, built by team member Mukhammad Shukur. The project made its way to Instagram and racked up millions of views. 

Water Saver Pro: smarter water, one sensor at a time

Yadro Team is currently focusing on a project initiated by team member Farrukh Nurliboyev: Water Saver Pro, a device that helps people understand and reduce how much water they’re using. The prototype is about 90% complete and built around an Arduino^® Nano ESP32 programmed with the Arduino^® IDE, paired with water flow sensors, Firebase cloud storage, and a Telegram notification system that sends real-time alerts. A mobile app is in development, and the team has plans to add AI-powered features down the line.

It’s a genuinely useful idea – the kind of project that starts as a prototype and could, with the right momentum, end up making a real difference in how people manage a resource that most of us take for granted. The team clearly thinks it has legs too: Water Saver Pro recently advanced to the next stage at StartupFest Uzbekistan, one of the country’s leading innovation and startup events.

Why we love this

Four years of working with Arduino. Competitions, startup challenges, innovation events. A team leader who teaches what he knows to the next wave of students. A project that already has millions of people paying attention, and another one that’s advancing through a national startup competition.

Yadro Team is proof that curiosity, determination, and the right tools – even in the hands of teenagers – can produce work that deserves serious attention. We’re rooting for them, and we can’t wait to see what comes next. 

Arduino, Nano, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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On July 2nd, three days before the British Grand Prix, Arduino brought a hands-on workshop to Silverstone for 40 students aged 16 to 19, supported by Mission 44 and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. in the framework of the Igniting Inclusion Summit. The setting couldn’t have been more fitting, and as part of the bigger Qualcomm family, we are proud to have had the chance to empower young and bright minds with an activity that was such a natural fit for our team. 

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., through its Snapdragon^® brand, is a Founding Corporate Sponsor of Mission 44 – a global foundation established by Sir Lewis Hamilton with a clear belief: that it’s possible to succeed no matter your background. Through inclusive education and improving access to STEM careers, the foundation works to build a fairer, more inclusive future – and events like this one are a direct expression of that mission. Not to mention, the workshop was an exciting moment for students (and us!) to meet the 7-time F1 world champion himself!

From unboxing to AI model in under an hour

Many of the students, who are supported by Mission 44 partners AFBE-UK and upReach, had never worked with sensors, AI, or machine learning before. Yet within the first hour, they were already collecting live data and exploring how AI models are trained.

The goal was simple: to understand how an F1-inspired telemetry system works. Through hands-on experiments with Arduino^® UNO Q 4GB, Arduino^® Modulino and using Arduino^® App Lab and Edge Impulse as their development environments, students experienced how information is collected, analyzed, and turned into insights in real-time.

Discovering the tools that bring a future in racing within reach

For the final part of the session, some of the students raced miniature cars around a custom-built track while accelerometers streamed motion data over Bluetooth. UNO Q processed telemetry at the edge, computer vision tracked each car, and leaderboards displayed lap times, crashes, and performance metrics in real-time.

For many students, seeing their race transformed into live telemetry was the moment it all clicked.

Telemetry is exactly the kind of real-world application that we are seeing with UNO Q. Not only in our demos and workshops, but also in professional motorsport contexts (have you read about Star Stream’s success in bringing F1-level telemetry to race teams and fleet operators around the world?).

Ready to build your own future?

STEM skills are increasingly central to careers across every industry – and access to hands-on learning experiences like this one can make a real difference in who gets to build that future. Giving young people from all backgrounds the tools, the context, and the confidence to engage with technology is something we care about deeply at Arduino.

Visit Mission 44 to learn more about their work, and if today’s post made you want to start your own journey into AI, sensors, and real-world data… just get your own hands on an UNO Q!

Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Arduino and UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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There’s a yellow payphone bolted to a wall in Takoma Park, Maryland. Pick up the handset, press a number, and instead of a dial tone you hear a night heron, a red-tailed hawk, a wood thrush. No spare change needed. No app to download. Just a phone, a button, and the sound of a bird that might be living in the creek down the street.

This is BirdCalls, a project by David Schulman – sound designer, violinist, composer, audio producer, and adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University – and it’s been quietly running on Arduino hardware for almost a decade.

Arduino has always had a particular kind of relationship with artists and musicians. Ease of use and accessibility were never just selling points for makers and engineers; they opened the door for people whose first instinct is creative, not technical, to bring an idea to life without needing a degree in electronics to do it. BirdCalls is a clear example of what happens when that door is wide open.

“An old piece of tech that reconnects us to nature”

The project began in 2016, when Takoma Park asked residents for ideas on what to do with a payphone that technology had made obsolete. Schulman’s pitch: hot-wire it to play birdsong. He’d long been familiar with the field recordings held by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library, and he’d always loved payphones as objects. BirdCalls put the two together.

As NPR reported when they featured the project in 2024, the payphone has become a local fixture: picked up by neighborhood children, by adults waiting at the bus stop, by anyone curious enough to lift the handset. Schulman told NPR he’d love to build more BirdCalls boxes elsewhere, featuring birds specific to those places. He mentioned wanting to feature coua calls from Madagascar, sounds so unusual people might wonder what planet they’re hearing from. When we spoke to him recently, he captured the spirit of the whole project in a simple sentence: “I like the idea of an old piece of tech that reconnects us to nature.”

These days, STEM education and AI innovation make headlines every day – and rightly so. But BirdCalls reminds us that technology has always had another job too: giving people a way to express something, and to experience something, that words alone don’t quite cover. A payphone that plays birdsong isn’t trying to optimize anything. It’s just offering a sensory experience, and helping you notice the world around you a little more.

^{Photo provided by The Willows Community School, Culver City}

From a Maryland sidewalk to a Los Angeles schoolyard

The project’s reach has grown well beyond that one yellow box. At The Willows Community School in Culver City, California, a BirdCalls phone was installed on the outside of one of the buildings after Head of School Lisa Rosenstein heard the NPR segment and asked science teacher Ann Istrin to look into bringing one to campus. Donated by The Willows’ Class of 2024, the phone is now used by students throughout the day and features 10 birds native to the local area, from the Allen’s Hummingbird to the Great Horned Owl. Rosenstein described the phone as an “interactive, experiential, and inspirational tool” that extends the science curriculum while connecting students to the nature around them. 

That story is about to repeat itself on the other side of the country. This fall, Wake Forest Elementary School in North Carolina will have its own BirdCalls phone installed and running – a new chapter for a project that started with one phone box and one town’s birds, and keeps finding new schoolyards and new species to feature.

^{Branden Hall, hot-wiring the original BirdCall phone}

Simple by design

The technology behind BirdCalls is refreshingly modest. The original 2016 phone was hot-wired by programmer, designer, and engineer Branden Hall, who has continued to generously consult on code troubleshooting for Schulman’s more recent installations. In 2024, Schulman worked with programmer and engineer Ryn Slack to build new code from scratch for the next generation of BirdCalls phones, adding capabilities like randomized playback, so the experience feels a little different every time someone picks up the handset.

Across the various installations, the team has relied on Arduino^® UNO and Arduino^® Nano boards. There’s no cloud connection, no app, no Wi-Fi required – the device just needs power. All the audio files and bird information live locally on an SD card, which means each BirdCalls phone runs entirely on its own, indefinitely, with nothing to maintain beyond keeping the lights on.

That simplicity is the whole point. Schulman didn’t need a complex system to build something that’s meant something to thousands of people across two coasts. He needed a board reliable enough to trust, simple enough to learn quickly, and flexible enough to get out of the way of the idea. Sometimes the most interesting use of a microcontroller isn’t the most technically ambitious one. It’s the one that gets a kid at a bus stop to stop, pick up a phone that doesn’t ring, and listen to a bird they didn’t know was their neighbor.

Arduino, UNO, and Nano are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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Solar energy is one of the most important technologies of our time, and understanding how it works can be… enlightening! Julián Caro Linares, Senior Field Technology Evangelist at Qualcomm Europe, built a project that helps learn about this topic with a hands-on approach: a fully functional, fully open-source smart solar panel system that adjusts to optimize solar exposure in real-time, built with UNO Q and a handful of Arduino^® Modulino nodes. The best part? He explains every step so you can 3D print, assemble, and program it yourself, too! 

A shining moment for UNO Q!

The system does a surprising amount for something you can build at home or in a classroom. Two servo motors move the solar panel continuously, orienting it toward the best position to capture energy from the sun based on a sky scan the board runs automatically. A live dashboard – served directly from the Linux side of UNO Q to any browser on your local network – shows panel orientation, a solar heatmap, real-time energy readings, infrared light levels, and local weather data. Just watching it update is pretty cool!

And the system doesn’t just chase the sun, it also protects itself. If temperatures climb too high, the panel adjusts to avoid damage. If a snowstorm or sandstorm is forecast, it moves to a protective vertical position. If it gets too dark to generate meaningful energy, it returns to a resting position and waits. And when dust or debris accumulates, it vibrates – just like NASA’s Mars rovers do – to shake itself clean.

All of this runs on UNO Q thanks to its dual-brain architecture: the Linux side handles the dashboard, weather data, and higher-level logic, while the real-time microcontroller reads sensors and drives the motors. The Modulino nodes do the sensing: Modulino Light reads both visible and infrared light, Modulino Thermo monitors temperature and humidity, Modulino Movement detects anomalous vibrations, and Modulino Vibro handles the self-cleaning function. 

Everything was easily orchestrated through Arduino® App Lab, using three ready-to-use Bricks: 

• weather_forecast: for an online API that always has the latest weather information;
• web_ui: to build and host the webpage;
• dbstorage_tsstore: to store and get data using a time series database.

Try it as a bright classroom project

Julián designed this explicitly as an educational tool, and it shows. The project is fully open-source – 3D files, code, and a complete step-by-step tutorial are all available on Arduino^® Project Hub. On the hardware side, a small solar panel and two servo motors are all you need to add. For the software, Arduino App Lab handles the whole setup.

What makes it particularly compelling as a teaching tool is how many real concepts it touches at once. Students can explore renewable energy, sensor fusion, weather data integration, edge AI decision-making, real-time data visualization, and basic robotics – all within a single, coherent project that actually does something. Just observe when the panel tilts toward the sun, or switches to emergency mode before a storm: the logic behind is visible and understandable. 

“It’s a very interesting project to do at home and to apply in the classroom,” he says, “to show how we can use UNO Q to solve real-life problems in actual solar panel installations.”

Check out the full tutorial on Arduino Project Hub.

In addition to the Arduino Store, UNO Q is available to order from DigiKey, Farnell, Mouser, Newark, RS Components, and Robu.in, along with our other authorized distributors and resellers.

Arduino, UNO, Modulino and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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Just a few weeks after launching the UNO Q DIY synth bundle, we’re adding a new classic project you can pick up in one click, and get done in a weekend. 

Meet the UNO Q Arcade bundle: a rewarding new way to start building with UNO Q, following a complete step-by-step tutorial towards a clear objective – and gaining hands-on tech experience as you go!

Not only is the bundle designed to make your experience frictionless and rewarding, but it comes out during a special sale with a 20% discount built right in to sweeten the deal. Don’t sleep on it! If the DIY synth bundle taught us anything, it’s these sell out fast.

The UNO Q Arcade bundle: one board, infinite games

Now anyone can build their own arcade cabinet, in just a few hours of fun. Follow the instructions available on Arduino^® Project Hub, and you’ll quickly have UNO Q run RetroArch – the well-established open-source multi-system emulator – directly on its Debian Linux side, outputting via HDMI and handling audio over USB. No separate single-board computer, no extra compute module, no compromises: the Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor manages multiple emulation cores, controller input, video, and audio simultaneously, while the onboard eMMC provides plenty of room for ROMs and configuration files.

But one board does not a bundle make! We’ve included three easy-to-use Arduino^® Modulino nodes – Buttons, Joystick, and Movement – to make the controller side of UNO 4GB really shine. Modulino eliminate complex wiring: just daisy-chain them together via Qwiic and you’re ready to configure. Use Joystick to simulate D-Pad or mouse movement, Buttons for single or multi-key shortcuts, and Movement for motion-based mouse control. Every input is customizable to your playstyle. 

Create your own games with open-source Godot

So you can build the cool hardware, and leverage ready-to-use software to play your favorite retro-style games. But how about creating your own?

Thanks to its Debian Linux environment, UNO Q can run projects built with the popular open-source game engine Godot. This makes the UNO Q the heart of a compact game-development platform and, ultimately, a super-portable DIY video game console.

Develop your game with Godot, connect UNO Q to a display via HDMI, add a USB audio device, and build your own controller using Modulino nodes or other Arduino-compatible hardware. Buttons, joysticks, motion sensors, knobs, LEDs, and even environmental sensors can become part of the gameplay – not just accessories connected to it.

Put everything inside a 3D-printed or custom enclosure, add a small HDMI display and a portable power source, and your project can move from desktop prototype to a self-contained gaming device you can carry, demonstrate, and play almost anywhere.

Check out these inspiring GitHub repos to get a better idea of how you can stretch the UNO Q Arcade bundle: 

• Hackathon Project Spear
• Arduino Summer Game
• SummerEngine Hackathon
• Penguin Modulino Explorer

Ready? Set? Play!

While the community has been building these kinds of playful and retro projects for years, UNO Q makes them more capable than ever. With the bundle, we want to make it easier to get started, and more affordable to dive in. Bring your creativity! We’ve taken care of the rest.

Get the UNO Q Arcade bundle (with 20% discount until September 10th!).

Check out the full tutorial on Arduino Project Hub.

Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Arduino, Modulino, UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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If you want to build RC airplanes, you’ll need a way to make lightweight wings. 3D printing can work with foaming filament, but most 3D printers have limited build volume. A better method is to use a hot wire cutter to shape foam. Michael Rechtin’s CNC hot wire cutter automates that process across four axes, which is perfect for making large, high-quality airplane wings.

Hot wire cutters are very simple and you can get basic handheld models for about $15. They work by passing current through a nichrome (nickel-chromium) wire, so resistive heating makes the wire hot. When the temperature is right, that wire will melt material (like Styrofoam) on contact, resulting is a straight cut with almost no force.

Rechtin’s machine pulls the hot nichrome wire between two actuated assemblies, each with two axes. They move the ends of the nichrome wire independently, both horizontally and vertically. When the two sides move the same way, you get cuts straight across — a consistent cross section. If they move differently, the wire can stretch across at an angle, so more complex shapes are possible.

Almost all of the parts of the machine are identical to what you’d find on a 3D printer: aluminum extrusion, stepper motors, a RAMPS 1.4 controller on an Arduino Mega 2560 board, and TMC2209 stepper drivers. That receives G-code created with an online tool called RC Airplane Wing Designer, which was built specifically for this kind of work.

The only unique hardware is that used for the nichrome wire. A novel pulley mechanism keeps the wire under constant tension, regardless of machine position. Power comes from a variable DC power supply, so Rechtin can tune the voltage to achieve the right current and resistance to get the best wire temperature for performance. Then the wire physically extends between MIG welding tips, which are designed for feeding wire and passing current.

The machine works great, giving Rechtin the ability to fabricate the perfect airfoils for his RC airplanes.

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