Zach Seibold

How to Make (almost) Anything

Final Project Progress / Group Project

I spent some of this week working on a way to control an array of shape memory alloy with a minimal number of pins. Jean Francois helped me figure out a way to array a combination of p-MOSFETS and n-MOSFETS. I might just use a bigger microcontroller and assign each piece of SMA its own pin.

SMA array test.

Project 13a
Here's my board layout in eagle.
<Project 13b
Heres the .png I used to mill the board. I was initially hoping to use different voltages at the microcontroller and SMA but that would cause a gate/source voltage conflict at the MOSFETS + they would always be left open...
<Project 13c
My partially soldered board. The SMA works when connected to one MOSFET (either p or n) but doesn't work when connected to both.
<Project 13d
For the group project, I was responsible for photographing our light painting machine in action, post-processing any images, and organizing the text + content on our project page. I set up a camera in bulb mode to allow for long exposure times our project required. The sprial toolpath took about 3 minutes to complete, the "Hello" toolpath took about 2.5 minutes. Bulb mode allows the shutter of the camera to stay open for as long as the shutter release button is depressed.