Week no.9
- Group Assignment
- Mechanical Design
Assigments :
- Design a machine (mechanism+automation), including the end effector
- Build the passive parts and operate it manually
- Document the group project and your individual contribution
Machine Design
As a group we decided to make something to the Fablab Insper. So, to solve a common lab problem, we choose to make a DrawBot Machine to post alerts and messages in a elegant way. The machine was based in a open source project : Makelangelo.
The datailed documentation can be found at Group Assignment - Mechanical Design.
Individual Contribution
My individual contributions for this assignment were:
- Printed Parts Assembly
- Eletrical parts and wiring assembly
- Mechanical tests and adjustments
- Software configuration
We divided the workforce to make the machine work, at first I got the assembly of printed parts witch had problems by the natural tolerance of 3D printing. The solution was patience and a sandpaper.
After that I helped making all wiring and electrical connections. Long wires were needed, as well as soldering and isolation, we had trouble with bad connections so I made all new wires and connections.
On the first run we two major problems, the machine were floppy .. vibrated a lot ! So I helped stretching the handles and plastic string.
The second and critical problem was the software configuration, I helped measuring the pulleys diameter and wire lengths to correctly adjust the software side. Other thing I discover, at first we assembled a small drawing area and was very difficult to calibrate, the machine could not draw a straight line the deformation by polar coordinates were too much for the software to compensate. So I increased the drawing area and correct input the mechanism sizes to a successful print.
