A very long 3 days of struggle, and a delta hopper.
This week's group project was a long one with very few days available because of Veteran's day (our shop was basically closed for Friday and Saturday).
We had our first meeting on Thursday.
Several options were voted against each others (cake frosting printer, circuit testing multimeter probe, pancake/salami delta picker, chocolate mill), and votes leaned for the pancake delta picker.
Our of the first run of design brainstorming and harvesting over the web (mainly on instructables and thingiverse), we found three different types of delta systems:
The design team made the decision to do the rail version, which would reuse the rails from Jake.
I was part of the arm team with Natalie and Elysa.
The group team has all the history, so I'll just briefly list what happened with me here:
- Searched for universal joint designs
- 3D-printed one of them in our team's pack (had to use blender to cut some extra pieces from the modular joint)
- Tried laser-cutting a press-fit box in acrylic for the arms, but the fit was never perfect, and the end box was too elastic. We finally went with plywood thanks to Elysa!
- Used file and sand paper extensively to clean some of the HDPE and Delrin parts, earning me the nickname of sandmaster (achievement unlocked!)
- Helped drill several Delrin pieces (parts 4+7) following the lead of the tapping and screwing master Alex Genshaft
- Used the gluegun with small plastic washers to have smooth arm ends (avoiding the string to get stuck)
- Laser-cut all the flat sheets that could be instead of using the milled ones (because milling didn't go as expected), including part 2 (multiple versions) and 8, as well as the base, top and end-effector plates which I redesigned quickly in Onshape
- Added the logo (frog) and named the machine as Delta Hopper with Natalie
- Extended the basic wires of our board with Ben and Alex after we had finally assembled the whole machine together
