Final Project

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Concept

Final Project idea:

My idea for the final project came to me in the middle of the first week while I was still doubting about the project to be realized, I set a global project since my childhood that I really wanted to work on. Unfortunately, a period of 6 months was never enough to make my dream come true so I tried to break it down into sub-projects and work on one of these projects as a final project for fabacademy. My dream project is to build a whole city suitable for people who have a visual impairment (this is what I wrote in my memory book when I was 8 years old). So a braille printer will undoubtedly be a great idea as a final project and also a first step towards my dream.

Existing models:

I made researches to know which models already existed and I found several industrial models and also open source here are some machines found on the internet.Of course the cost is incomparable between industrialized machines and prototypes made by manufacturers. Throughout this research, I was inspired by several machines and the first sketch of my machine appeared in my head.The most interesting and also open-source was the one made at fabacademy2018 during a group assignment in the fablab trivandrum, it was a good start to understand what it's all about and also to study the parts I'm going to work on.

State of art:

I aim to create a machine that will convert text input into braille and write it on a A4-sized paper, so people with visual impairment can feel it and will be able to access printed text.

Things you need to know about braille

Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired. Each character is a 3x2 matrix of bumps(or dots) separated by standard distances. In the image below are English alphabets in braille and the standard distances as shown in this figure.

Realization

First sketch

1*: The paper feed mechanism, which must feed the paper, corresponding to the standard Braille size.

2*: The mechanism for moving the print head to specific points on a horizontal axis.

3*: The end effector, which punches holes in paper at precise points to print Braille. I decided to use one that punches six holes at the same time for faster writing.

My project incorporate

3D Design

Additive and subtractive fabrication processes

Electronics design and production

Microcontroller interfacing and programming

What will you design?

I want to make a small brailler printer that can be portable so I'm going to do the mechanical design and of course all the electrical part so that it becomes adequate to the size of the machine.

What materials and components will be used and how much it costs?

Since the lockdown, I can't find some parts on the tunisian market and I can't order them from chinese websites so I've changed many parts and I hope I could buy the old ones because it will make my machine cheaper.

What processes will be used?

3D Printing

CNC milling

PCB precision milling

Electronic production.

Lisence

My intention since the beginning of Fab Academy was to share my results with the open public, provide my discoveries and try to contribute to the community through my own learning process. For this reason, I tend to stick to a license, which allows anyone to copy and distribute the content as well adapt, remix or transform. To choose my lisence , I use the CC License Chooser a chooser of Creative commons which is very useful tool for makers and any developer in any field.it helps authors keep and manage their copyright on terms they choose.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License..