A dumbed-down Machining / Robotics blog for artists?

Hoqjed

I'd like to get more familiar with how machines and robots move and function, but everything I've tried searching is super heavy in math and goes too deep with its explanations (not to mention really dry reading and videos).

I'd love it if there were more intuitive and visual explanations, like how joints are formed for arms and how they move, a small breakdown of their optics, etc.

Anyone come across something like this?

ambelamba

I've been looking for similar things. I ended up settling with Google Images and Pinterest, though.

Meloncov

It's not free, but Stan Winston School has robotics/animatronics courses aimed at artists.

Fingus

This is an excellent youtube channel for demoing different mechanisms.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCli_RJkGWfZvw4IlDLHNCQg

Paul Pepera has a very good blog dedicated to hard surface reference.
http://hardsurface.tumblr.com/
And a pinterest too.
https://www.pinterest.com/paulpepera/

And here is another nice tumblr blog for interesting machines and patterns.
http://shapeshifting.tumblr.com/

Chimp

Delve into the DIY robotics community, people who cobble together robots themselves with arduinos etc. Because it's a lot more homebrew, you get to see the hardware without any fancy body work covering up the servos etc, and you usually get to see the making-of. Course it's small scale stuff, but once you understand it you can scale up. Youtube is full of vlogs on this sort of stuff - can find links if need be.

cptSwing

This is a classic: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Machines-How-They-Work/dp/0486217094

Hoqjed

Thanks all for the answers, great stuff!

@Chimp I found some DIY videos on youtube, but if you've come across any specific ones you found to be awesome i'll gladly take the links!

RyanB

Humble Bundle has an Arduino book package from Make which also has a lot of stuff with sensors, etc.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/make-arduino-and-raspberry-pi