12. Mechanical design & Machine design

For this week and week 13, we did a group project but this is what I did as part of it in more detail.

The hook

The hook was made on Onshape, the measurements were taken of the support beam that we are going to hang it off of. It was 2 inches by 2 inches, so when it was being made, we made sure the inside was at least 2 inches, but we made it a bit bigger so there was room for it actually to fit around the beam.

One issue that came up was the hook not being long enough to fit on the beam and hold the box. We were limited by the size of the 3d printer plate, so we made an extension. We took the width of the original hook and made it the same as the extension, then we made it 7 inches long so that there was enough space. The hook and the extension are connected through brackets, which we made a hole in by soldering through the PLA and using a nut and bolt to hold it in place.

Braces

When we were thinking of how we wanted to attach the extension of the hook to the actual hook, as well how to attach the hook to the box, we decided we needed braces to hold things together. We didn’t think we had any so I found some online to 3D print.

At first we used it when we were putting everything together but we found metal ones that we thought would fit more snug, so we ended up not using them but they were good for practice.

Ardunino and Motor Holder

A last minute addition to our project was a structure to hold the motor in place so it wouldn't get pulled, and a structure to hold the arduino and battery so they would be out of the way of the motor. This also helped keep the box organized because there are a lot of wires and we don’t want them getting pulled

The first one I'm going to talk about is the motor holder. I measured how much space the motor itself took. then made those measurements a bit bigger on Onshape so that I could actually place the motor inside.

After that I 3D printed it and hot glued it in the corner of the box where the motor had been sitting before

After making the motor holder I thought about making the arduino holder so I also measured that by messing how far out the arduino and battery stick out and then estimated the size I would need to make it. My idea was to have it be like a hook almost so it could be a slot for the arduino and battery to be sit in. I also make this on Onshape.

Then I 3D printed it, the first time I printed it was too big so I downsized and printed again which worked fine. After printing it , I soldered holes in it for the bolts to fit so I could connect the flat part of the holder to the inside wall.

Files and Links

Group documentation Braces Website Braces STL Hook+ Extension 3D Print File Arduino Holder File Motor Holder File