<h1>Mechanical and Machine Design</h1> <h4>Wednesday 02 May, 2018</h4> <div style="width:60%; float:right"> <img src="media/week15/group-shot.jpg" style="width:100%; float:left; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px;"/> <img src="media/week15/mantis-fraesivel-4-axis.jpg" style="width:100%; float:left; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px;"/> </div> # Fraesivel Part I + Tasks: + Check Mantis machine + Do Shopbot Indexer + Do the 4-axis machining ###My individual contribution this week: In the first week I helped with the CAD design, 3D printing and recommissioning the TinyG, though they were mainly Bergþóra and Bára's tasks for that week. It was a pretty busy week, since Bára was finishing her exams and Birita was teaching (final week of the term). The main difficulties we had were that the machine hadn't been working for a number of years, we'd never used TinyG before and we had to set up the connection between the TinyG and computer using ChilliPeppr. If you're looking for our group page, you can check out the video below: http://archive.fabacademy.org/2018/labs/falabvestmannaeyjar/mechanical_design/index.html I had a pretty great time learning about stepper motors from <a href="http://blog.inventables.com/p/stepper-motors.html">this link</a> and understanding more about how they work, microstepping and their advantages/disadvantages compared to other prime movers. It was also super cool to work on Frosti's original Fab Academy machine, since the lab would really benefit from having another circuit-milling capable machine and the control that I learned from this would help to plan out my final project. <div style="width:100%; float:left"> <img src="media/week15/limit-switches-tinyg.jpg" style="width:100%; float:left; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px;"/> <legend>"One of the limit switches made by Birita. It was tricky to get them low profile because of the already limited range of motion of the Mantis."</legend> <img src="media/week15/limit-switch-boards.jpg" style="width:100%; float:left; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px;"/> <img src="media/week15/limit-switch-buttons.jpg" style="width:100%; float:left; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px;"/> <legend>"Three of the buttons were used as homing switches and the other three were used as limits. You can read more about them at <a href="http://archive.fabacademy.org/2018/labs/falabvestmannaeyjar/students/birita-idali/projects/mechanical_design/">Birita's page</a>."</legend> </div> Opportunities for future improvement include building a larger machine because the limited working range of the existing machine made it difficult to implement the new axis and also limit switches. <br>