This week the exercise was about mechanical design. the aim of the exercise is to design or modify a machine, making as many of the components as possible, document the group project and your individual contribution, make the passive parts and operate it manually. Here is the link to see the details.
As mechanical design I have decided to work on my final project to develop the frame structure and mechanical design for the Gimbal so that i have an idea how is the wholes structure for the drone and gimbal will come together. and also figure out all the joineries. As me and Aldo Sollazzo are working together for the final project, we were working together and developing both, the frame structure of the drone and mechanic structure for the Gimbal.
for design and the development of the drone and the gimbal, we were working together in order to finalise the design and how the whole structure will look like and how both the parts are joining and also solved all the joineries so its more like combined efforts which you can see here, and then i have developed the drawing for the drone and lasercut the file in plywood to assemble everything. Here is the link to download fabDrone file.
Together with Aldo Sollazzo, i have developed the grasshopper script for the drone to make it parametric so that all the sizes of the frame and the press fit joineries can be adapted to all the different sizes of the motors and ESCs, propellors and electronics boards also the thickness of the wood. we are using 4.5 MM thick plywood for the first prototype, which we got from the leftover materials, here in the fablab. After laser cutting the first prototype, i realised some mistakes with joineries and also about structural strength, which i managed solved in the second prototype that was working very well with all the joineries and also the type of motors, ESCs and propellers i am using for the fabDrone. The idea behind using the Plywood as frame structure is that even if it crash and the frame will break, its easy to dismantle everything and you can laser-cut the pieces gain and assemble and it and it will be ready to fly again.
For the gimbal, we are making it for the Gopro and it is controlled by two servo motors which is being stabilised by the board while roll and pitch movement of the drone so that we can get the stable video out of it. so one servo is controlling the roll movement and the other servo is controlling the pitch movement. Here is the link to download fabGimbal file.
we decided to make it quiet simple and as light weight as possible and for that we decided to 3D print the all the parts for the Gimbal to make it light weight as we can control the density of it and also its quiet unified and solid compare to the one out of wood.