Week
16: Mechanical Design
In this week
we only have (!) a group assignment including individual one’s.
Therefore,
dyads were made. Chuma and myself took on the
challenge of designing X and Y axes movements systems of the fortune cookie
claw machine. Brainstorming led us to
mimic Échofab CNC machine which essentially does what
we wanted our machine to do. The Z motion (the claw system really) in our case
has to move from up and down position upon command when the user has placed it
over a desired cookie (from proper handling positioning on the X and Y axes.
Sketches
were made to ascertain we all understood what was to be made and my limited
drawing talents yielded this two first attempts and were salvaged by greatly
appreciated and much more talented Chuma (last one
here):
This
translated into this OnShape design.
Essentially
assembling as such.
From there,
our proposal was to be integrated into main assembly parts (see others from our
group report). Standard laser cutting and assembly:
And while
everything is happening in parallel (!) the X and Y axes will look like this in
its final phase:
While
designing and making this “X/Y chariots” extra parts are needed: bushings to hold
the rods were needed. So, I turned to Thinkercad for
a quick design and 3D printed a lot of them:
This was my
personal contribution to the nuts and bolts part of the team effort.
Also not
showed here, but worth mentioning I contributed also at troubleshooting,
setting up and assembling the device.