Homework
Our homework was to build a machine, automate it, and
document the group project and each individual's contribution. This two week assignment is FUN, especially the collaboration aspect. We are making a Zen Garden.
Machine Building Teamwork
Dan--idea, CAD, and assembly
Gail--research, boards, group documentation, assembly
Research took time, as it always does. The tutorial on FAB Academy's site seemed perfect, but our team questioned whether or not it would be easier to connect to the nodes 10-pin connector with another 10-pin connector on the bridge.
Gail saw through email chatter that the board Bas designed would make cabling easier, so she searched and searched. We contacted gurus and classmates and got the link, but it didn't work. Later, Bas
sent it to the instructors, and later to me...thanks, Bas....
but we ended up cutting the original Fabnet example board that was in the tutorial and we modified the tough cabling as needed. Time was of the essence! Thanks to all of the gurus and students who answered emails so promptly
and were happy to help.
Dan and Scott worked together on sketches for our Zen Garden idea and we all discussed the possiblities.
We used the example files for the boxes that would house the drive mechanisms, but Dan had to modify them to fit our laser.
We ended up making 2 boxes, one for an x-axis and one for a y-axis. We made an additional "tray" to hold the sand for our Zen Garden as well as a "tabletop" to set it in.
Rachel worked at assembling the stages and components and making sure everything fit well.
After the board was cut, we figured out how to make the cables work, labeled them so that we could directly solder the wires to the board, and Rachel soldered it. Soldering wires directly to pads is not an easy task....
As soldering was going on, we downloaded the proper codes and programs such as pygestalt and setup.py so that we were ready to program.
Initially, we tried to create a single parametric program that generated the coordinates and controlled the movements of the machine. However, it did not work. We were successful by generating coordinates with onw paremetric python program and then pasting the coordinates into another python program that controlled the moves. The problem appears to be based on the softwares interpretation of the data types. We are still working on better programs to run our Zen Garden, but as you can see in the videos below, it works well.
The magnet moves the metal bearing to make paths in the
sand. We experimented with several different magnets and bearings and we even
tried two magnets instead.
We were all VERY EXCITED to see it work. Making things, especially really cool Zen Gardens, is what FAB Lab is all about!
