19. Project development¶
This week I worked on defining my final project idea and started to getting used to the documentation process.
What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?¶
Some molds for the pieces have been completed along with the electronics and code for the stepper motor movement. Data collection from the input also has been completed. Remaining tasks include the construction of the gantry, which I have experience with from machine week, more tailored pcb design and wire management, the top chess board, and a full interface.
What’s working? what’s not?¶
The stepper motors are moving, but the molds have not yet had magnets successfully insert molding into them. The readings from the 3d hall effect sensor are coming in accurately, but they are measurements of magnetic flux rather than distances, so that will have to be worked out as well.
What questions need to be resolved?¶
The alignment of all of the parts of the gantry needs to be calculated, and the method of using the 3d hall effect sensor to get positions needs to also be worked out.
What will happen when?¶
Many of the tasks will be done in parallel with molds hardening while 3d designs for the gantry parts are designed while others are printing. During prints and waiting for parts to come in, pcb design can also be done with tests for hardware functionality. Elementary wire management mechanisms can also be done during the design stage. This all should take a week and a half leaving a couple days for assembly and a couple for the making of the video and slide. The major interface design will be done in a separate spiral as it is not entirely necessary although it would be great to have, and work on it will be done after the other tasks or while I’m waiting for a print to finish or parts to come in.
What have you learned?¶
Over the course of fab academy I have greatly expanded my knowledge. I have both learned new design methods and mechanisms and greatly enhanced my abilities and confidence in techniques I already knew.
One of the most useful things I’ve learned is parametric design as before I have spent hours redesigning pieces just to make things work around just a single measurement while designing parametrically would solve this quickly.
Molding and casting was also really efficient, and I really liked it as it makes creating multiple identical pieces far quicker than 3d printing each of them.
Another extremely useful skill is pcb design as it allows for optimization and efficiency of electronics.
Learning baremetal programming to directly manipulate registers and bits has also been greatly enjoyable for me as someone who has been using and prefering progressively lower and lower level languages starting with python then golang then c++.
Learning networking also is a great skill for better organization and modularization as well as expanding the number of pins available for use with just the addition of another microcontroller.