Mechanical Design

Alright pals...this is week 15 and 16 combined covering the Mechanical and Machine Design aspects... The most amazing thing is that its a group-oriented week where we all came together as students together with our Local Instructor so as to build a machine and make some few automation in regard to its functionality....
Before we go into details lets preview several topics that were touched upon during the lecture:..

Principles of mechanical Design were listes and they included:.. stress-strain, moduli, elastic, plastic flow, friction, spalling, hysteresis, backlash, flexure, force loops, elastic averaging,kinematic coupling..

The various materials used in mechanical design happened to be normal stuff such as:..Plastic, Metal, Ceramic, Rubber and Foam...

Considering safety and stability fasteners was also a key area comprising of nuts, bolts and washers..

Still on support Framing was addressed as vital in favor of metals, plastics, t-slots and self-aligning methods..

To the real thing now which is drive or rather movement mechanisms.. several options were placed on table which included:..Gears, Sprockets, Belts, Chains, Shafts, Rods and Nuts...

Still on drive.. Guide is crucial when it comes smooth and flawless movement hence it was woth mentioning Shafts, Rails and Slides...

Yet another amazing component in the facilitation of movement... Bearings:..Balls, Thrust, Linear, Rotary, Sleeves... not forgetting Rotary:..which involves Wheels, Pulleys and Casters...

Cables shouldn't be left out since they play a huge role also and among its constituents are:..Ties, Carriers, Wire, Fiber...

Liquids do pop at times...utilizing means such as piping and tubing..

As if those are not enough the vital of vitals is the mechanisms involved in any Mechanical Design and here cool descriptions are captioned:...Flexures, Linkages, Whippletree, Pantograph, Sarrus, CoreXY and the great Hobberman..

But the icing was the assignment which was designed to encompass all the areas touched upon during the lecture:..and here it goes..Make a machine , including the end-effector, build the passive parts and operate manually
afterwhich we were supposed to document the group project and individual contribution..

Now now now..about Machine Design week, it was really cool since you would somehow term it as bringing the mechanical design aspect into life or rather automation...
Here we were reinforced with much more techniques in the field of mechanical and machine design and they comprise of:...

module, machine

sensors, actuators

power electronics

open, closed-loop control

static, dynamic paths

PID, acceleration, model predictive control

embedded, virtual control

real-time networks

file formats

toolpath planning

design representation, geometry solver



Which ofcourse followed with practical application which invloved automating the machine we created in the prior assignment...

Alright now that we're all on board with the week's details and subsequent assignments lets now see what I myself did to contribute in the project:...
I was entitled the electronics section which meant designing the circuits and fabricate them...The first thing was the H-bridge circuit which was meant to control and aid motor movement....The circuit as can see is on the assignment page above.. I seeked guidance from our local instructor Ken on various specifics concerning the H-bridge and few other components...
At first we were using SMD hbridge but it was very demanding in terms of pins hence we decided to create manual H-bridge using TIP and 500k resistors and diodes to curb back EMF in the circuit..
I created the circuits and after fabrication I went ahead and drilled the holes for the male headers and diodes which were through hole components..
.......


The final board i created looked as such after the drilling and placement of components in the TIP based H-bridge..

So thats it I participated in the MANTIS building and specifically contributed in the electronics design and production and I appreciated the chance to learn more about the electronics field...All the download link plus the original design files are available in the group link as shown in the iframe above...