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WORKFLOW

To start with this weeks group assignment we identify four main activities: downloading and understanding the files, machining the necessary parts for the project, programming the gestalt and finally testing the machine.

All of this depending upon the kind of machine we wanted to make. For this we decided to build a FOAM CUTTER machine as got inspired with the Slashbot example.

We assume that understanding this as an exercise will help us in future projects.

• Download Files

• Machining parts

• Programming

• Testing

CARDBOARD MACHINE

The Card Board Machine work has been divided in two faces: hardware and software. The hardware stage being all the tangible things like the cardboard construction and the electronics production that form the machine. And a software stage being the programming and interface development to control and manipulate the machine.

Hardware

Below you can see a summary of the procedure necessary to download, internalization and understanding of the original design and production as well as the modification of it according to our material using grasshopper.

Once we understood the behavior of the cardboard boxes with the mechanisms and having decide to use generating motion in axes X and Z we create a wooden stand to suport the structures.

You can see below the wooden stand design that we created to hold the cardboard boxes, for this we took advantage that the axes of movement of metal were bigger sticking out of the boxes and this was used to adapt the boxes and the wooden stand without using screws or glue.

You can download the Wooden Stand files in here.

Working with cardboard has its benefits and is good for prototyping. In our case we had a problem with the Z axe as you can see in the next video while we were testing the movement one of the lower side of one of the supports split up and we had to fix it with masking tape.

Next you can see the 12Vdc power supply to feed the 0.13mm micron (24ohms). This cable uses 12V and consumes 05A and 6W. This is in charge of cutting the Styrofoam.

Next you can see an imagen of the 4 Amperes 12vDC source used to power the stepper motors

Next we have the node cards used to control the motors besides the Fabnet.

Software

Regard to the software of our machine we proceeded to download Nadya and Imoyer's files, perform the installation pygestal-master as the Fab Academy tutorial.

After that, the programs recorded with the Makefile in application mode on the node cards.

The files that were recorded on the nodes cards were gestal.cpp and 086-005a.cpp the command to record it: sudo make -f Makefile program-avtisp2

With this we proceeded to run Nadyas example xy_plotter.py with python.

The interface enables the cutting machine, with MOVE command starts to execute the court of the word FabLab, such as photos shown

This cutting commands are in this file.

MTM