12 Mechanical Design and Machine Design¶

Week 11 / April 06 - Week 12 / April 13 - Break and Midterm¶

My Contributions to the Taz Machine Design Group project.

Brainstorming with the team¶

To begin the process we developed a brainstorming process with the team. We considered developing the following machines:

A CNC
A foam cutter machine.

After considering the possibilities, we closed our first session stating that we would work on the foam cutter machine. Later we developed a second session and in this conversation we came up with the concept of a machine that could help us to develop 360 scanning and photography.

The concept was simple: a circular machine, with a symmetric rotational axis. The engine would be on one end of the rotating axis and the camera support on the other end.

Design of the Stepper engine head.¶

Once we had a clear goal of what the machine would look like, how it would work and what it was supposed to do, we started developing the parts of the machine. I worked on the pieces necessary to hold the engine in place and to transfer the power of the engine to the machine.

The engine support had to perform the following functions:

Increase torque using a gearbox linked to the engine main axis.
Hold the engine in place and link it to the two parallel axis
transfer the power to the main rack and pinion

For this project we used an stepper bipolar motor

I worked alongside my colleague Edgar in making the sketches of how the engine support and the transmission mechanisms. Then I developed the drawings in Rhino. Finally this file was imported and consolidated in the Fusion Project containing the totality of the project.

Design of the central plate and axis holder structure.¶

After developing this part of the machine, a new challenge arose. Taz was conceived as a 360 photography device. The camera can be both pointed outside (to take panoramic pictures) or towards the inside (to take 360 photographs or videos of objects, or even, to develop 3d scanning.) - To be able to take 360 degree pictures of a static object in the center of Taz, we needed to have a static platform that shares the same axis, but does not move.

This represented an interesting design problem to solve. The solution was to develop an interior metal axis, to be inserted in the center of the rotational structure. This axis needed to remain static. To hold it in place, two small 3d printed pieces were designed:

The first one is an inverted pyramid that connects to the main wooden base of TAZ.

This inverted pyramid holds the axis in place and restrain it from rotating. The second piece is the support for objects in the center of the machine.

I designed these parts and then printed and assembled everything.

Assembling of the arduino and cnc holder structure + power supply holder.¶

Finally, I helped by assembling the arduino and CNC holding case, in the bottom part of TAZ. I also developed and assembled the power supply holder. Finally, I studied the layout of these pieces in the bottom part of the disc, and assembled them.