Mechanical Design and Machine Design
Group Assignment page - detailed info
This week was a bit problematic. That happens with group assignments, where there is no group and I am the onyl student taking Fab Academy at Aalto Fablab thsi year. Luckily I have one great instructor, who stepped in and made completing this assignment possible. Thank you!
The project we decided to replicate was a CodreXY plotter called "The Drawing Thing" designed by Leo McElroy. The machine was designed to use components that should be widely available. We followed the Bill of Materials as closely as it was possible given tight schedule.
Being in a well-equipped makerspace environment, we did not panic, when we found out we did not have the right type of wheels that would fit the rails. Also, wheels are kind of crucial in a plotter machine. The mechanism should move as smoothly as possible. We replicated the V-wheel design and 3-D printed the part with both FDM printer and an SLA one. It kind of worked. But 3-D printing wheels is not exactly the best manufacturing method, found out when spent a few hours sanding them...
So, lesson learnt: rapid prototyping is great and all, but if there are parts that are available off the shelf, reasonably priced, deliverable in a timely manner, just buy them, if you have a chance.
Also, following the plotter designer's documentation, I could see how important it is to design with replicability in mind, specifically, using the most generic components with easy access to them worldwide.
There was still some rapid prototyping freestyle as we wanted to get things done. Threads too long? Cut them with a metal saw. No more T-nuts? Cut alluminium and thread it. Washers not fitting? Lasercut an acrylic replacement. Of course, it takes more time to make those things, but it still is less time than waiting for delivery, when you need them right away.
There are still parts of the project that fall into the "Wow, magic" category for me, and when time allows, I would need to read more about that to fully understand, what is happening and how some parts work. Especially applies to GRBL Software and Universal GCode Sender. Controlling one stepper motor was troublesome enough, controlling two to follow X and Y coordinates? Magic.
I took over the video editing as that was also a part of the assignment. Not gonna lie - had fun doing it.
Open AI's Dall-E 2 was a tremendous help and an infinite source of inspiration. The 'uncanny valley' provided just the right level o creepiness
