Pranam Tries To Make Things

MAS.863 - 2016

Week 13: Machine Building

Team Building Machines That Make

The final week of weekly projects! This one was especially fun, as it was a team building exercise, where we learned to construct and communicate with Nadya's machine building platform. There were a lot of parts to this initial setup, and so I did my best to participate in all facets of the process.

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Figure 1. Assembling cables to program motors.

The motors were integral parts of the machine building platform, and our overall goal was to make the cardboard machines run through code. We first had to set up both the connections as well as the cardboard modules themselves.

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Figure 2. Setting up gestalt to prototype the control systems.

As seen above, the goal is to use gestalt to program the controls so to specifically control the motions of the cardboard modules. After setting that up and testing on a previously made module, it was time to make our own! I had a lot of fun putting together the parts, and creating a fully functional machine from just cardboard, that other group members had laser-cut.

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Figure 3. Setting up the cardboard modules.

Finally, it was time to do something with the modules. We decided to make a 3D glue gun printer (well kind of). Unfortunately, we misplaced the modules and couldn't assemble a final product, but the entire experience with machine building was fun and exciting!

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Figure 4. Figuring out the setup for our product.