14. Mechanical Design

Group Assignement

- Design a machine that includes mechanism+actuation+automation - Build the mechanical parts and operate it manually - Document the group project and your individual contribution

"Del Piero vs Buffon"

At Opendot we talked together about a machine which does something, and in its parts can be useful to our individual final projects. We thought of a ping pong ball shooter to a moving target, and after a brainstorming, we chose to built two machines: a ping pong ball shooter that will point a guided direction, raising its board and launching the ball through rotating wheels, and a guideline, and will shoot the ping pong balls, built by me and Laura Cipriani for the mechanical design; Gianluca De Rossi and Federica Selleri for the machine design; a remote-controlled target robot which will move at random, stopping and going alternatively, built by Alberto Ornaghi and Catherine Blanchard for the mechanical design; Francesco Pasino for the machine design. We are very excited! It is almost four months we study and practice together and we feel a team. We understand it is a great deal of complexity and a new adventure to be lived together. For the machin we chose the name "Del Piero" for the ball shooter, and "Buffon" for the robot target with basket.

I worked on the design of machine and on the mechanical part of the project. I would like create a ball shooter that can shoot ping pong ball with a linear trajectory, but also, changing the revolving speed between the two dc motors, you can give a spin to the trajectory.

I designed it in Rhinoceros. I used 3d printer for the ball recharger for dc motor holders, and for the wheel. All other pieces where cutted with laser.

Parts of the platform shoots balls:
* orientation platform: rotate along the z axis (stepper + potentiometer + bluethoot module)
* riser: (1 stepper + a potentiometer) rotates along the x axis
* launch pad: has a servo motor to launch the ball and two DC motors to run the discs continuously

The shooter was designed to shot ping - pong balls with 40 mm diameter. The gear were designed with fusion 360 plugin:

On our page "Opendot" I made the mechanical description of the machine. Here I would like to document the assembly of machine, that was, togheter with design it, the more exciting thing. In the following array of picture you have the making of step by step:

Here the video of making of and the final machine.

On our page "Opendot" you can find all the video and download all the files to make this machine.