4-The rest of the machine

1. Mesure every thing that will have a interaction with your design. (power supply, rods, step motors..) Don't forget to add a tolerance for a great fitting
2. The thing that we plan to create looks similar to a box so I go on Maker case, a site where you can easily and quickly generate parametric standard box. Enter your dimentions and download the svg or dxf file.
3. On Inkscape, I modify the vectors to add holes, modify the fingers, make some pieces longers, etc. I have a very clean visualisation of the final assembly in my head.
4. For the top of the machine, it is supposed to hold fortune cookies so it needs to be like a bowl, so to minimise the assembly and try something new, I draw some unclose line that will (after laser cutter) can be fold with a heat gun. Less glues, less ardwares...less troubles..maybe? We will see.
5. In the same mindset, I need to create a specific place that will allow the choosen cookie to land so we can read it. To do so I imagined the shape of a half sun that I can place in the middle front of the machine.
6. To draw some open rectangle (sun ray) perfectly align with a half circle is not easy on Inkscape, but I remember the parametric texture I made in week 3- Parametric Design. With the same cloning fonction I could make something great.

Start by making a simple box on Maker Case and export it in .svg

On Inkscape, modify the box. I use the ruler of Inkscape to align every pieces on the same ground to match the hight of the elements. I am from architecture and it was the same method...back in the days to draw on autoCad. You can aline all your elevation than place them place it in the good position around the plan (so here the bottom)It help to figure what goes where.

To complete the top which will be in acylic, I need to design the landing cookie place. Here is how I did to create that half sun. In inkscape I draw a circle and a vertical rectangle on it. It went, exactly like week 3, in clone and create a clone tiles. I select these parameters showed in the picture, the rest was 0. I cut what was in the middle and voilà!.

You can see the final result of the drawing here.

This is a final check, put the right color to the element (here the red will be cut in 1st than the blue). I was thinking to engrave the wood to hold the axes, but when I did it, I put everything in place without glue and the tolerance of the axes was too small so I desided to cut a hole afterall and put the same 3d printing part that Sylvain has done to hold the metal rod. (I base the hole from the pdf drawing from Chuma.)

To fold these little rectangles up, I take a wood 2X4 just to create a wall and I start heating the top of the rectangle. I was too impatient so the piece moved just not enought so I bend it and broke it...oops so I tried again being more patient this time and fold it. It did not fold straight so I cut a guide to help me folding straight as you can see. To protect your finger from the heat of the gun I used a piece of wood to fold it and another one with a clamp to hold the pieces until they are cold.

Assemble everything with the axes with no glue to verify if everything is fitting well. I leave the protection paper on the acrylic to protect until the last minute.

Based on the pdf of Chuma I modify its piece to make a fist version of the axes x,y. It's a little smaller to have a bigger tolerance and a lighter look. Doing it tested the flexibility of the material and spot fiew improvement. Sylvain take from there for the axes.

Chuma PDF

Modification on Inkscape I made.

5-Automation of the z axis.

1. To finalise the z axis, I needed wire. Francis show me a really nice tips to do so. I take 3 wires of differents colors and plug all of them into a drill, press on...tataaaa it give a wonderfull wire twisted.
2. Strip the protection of the wire at the end of it and plug it to your connector. To protect the connections and make a good wire management, I use a twisted wire management tube. So when the machine will move, all the wire will be moving toghetter in this protection sleeve.
3. Connect your wire into the board and with. the code test the z axis up and down.
4. The Z axis is now automated.
5. My biggest learning in that machine working with the groupe is never under estimated the cables management. I already plan some hole in the machine to integrated the cables, but it need much more to do something clean and durable in time. With Francis we put all the heatshrink tubing on everyconnection. and it was longer and messier that we exepted. Next time I will probably incorporate more the cable managment into the design.
6. I learn also more about the interconnection of the design, the motor and the circut. We canot change the z servo for something stronger because the board couldn't supported and the claw was much more heavier that we expected. I add a pring to my design to help the servo going up a little bit. and Bomi made the claw lighter using my connector directly.

Create a twisted wire to plug everything.

Connect the servo motor to longer wire

We didn't have anymore connectors so we wire the new twisted wire with femal jumper and add some heatshrink tubing to protect the connection frome the board to prevent shorts.

I twiste a protection sleeve to hold everything toghetter. We add to this same sleeve the other wire from the top of the machine.

Pushing the code and test the z axis.