Week14：Mechanical Design & Machine Design

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trouble shooting: re-draw the cad file and FTDI issue

• we follow the tutorial trying to drive the motor.

  • milling the little PCB board to provide 12V power for the motors.

  • We tried the general FTDI cable but fail, then we check the inventory, we found the FTDI cable is RS-485-WE.

  • After some survey, we still can't found the alternative product in Taiwan, we re-order the FTDI cable from the US in the end of May.

• After we got the right FTDI cable, suffering is not over.
• We found that our cardboard is not strong enought to do the machine. Jason re-draw the motor mount cad file.

• We use laser cutter to cut the 6mm MDF board.

  

Fablab gestalt installation and testing

• after half month of waiting, finally we got the currect FTDI cable.
• environment setting:
  • download FTDI driver form here
    
  • install python 2.7.10
  • because pyserial installation got some trouble on win7 x64(I can't find the x64 version pyserial), I am trying to install pip, then use pip install pyserial command to install pyserial.
  • Then install gestalt download from the github.com
  • I am trying set-up the environment on my Mac, too.
  • Finally, gestalt installation complete.
  • But...I got the error message: "Could not reach virtual node" on my pc and Mac.
  • after discuess with Jason, double comfirm the procedure and the wire. I still can't reach the node.
  • we decide to do some cross test, the result shows my board can't operate in Jason's PC either. Yi-Pin and I-Feng have simlar problem, too.
  • we found that only Jason's board can drive the motor on our computer normally. The rest of boards have some technical problems.

• This video demonstrate Jason's board connect to my own laptop.

Plan B: Arduino Uno with CNC shield

• as the machine present date approaching, we decide to switch to plan B.
• plan B is use arduino CNC shield to drive the motor

Machine Building

• we take 10W bule laser pointer and some acrylic beeds.
• Jason take over the G-code generation process.
• I design and laser cut the holder for the plat.

plat holder original file attached here

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