Machine Building

We decided to make a Zen Garden sketching machine for our project this week.

Below are photos from our ideation session:

Below are the demo videos that Valdemar made for our group:

My role for this week was to work on the endefactor (which was a magnet to activate and deactivate the ball which would draw our picture). Essentially, it was a "z"-axis that engaged and disengaged the magnet through distance. It needed to move up a few inches and then also have the ability to move back down.

The endefactor would sit on the bearing plate using a custom mounting hole:

We decided to use a servo for the endefactor. I worked with Leandra on the endefactor. The original idea was to use a rack and pinion mechanism, much like the following:

However, when I printed the parts (such as the gear) using the Prusa, the details were far too fine and the filament and supports were too messy to take apart:

We decided, with Quentin's input, that using a structure such as the following (shown below) was a better approach where we would only need to machine/print the arms for the endefactor as opposed to the rack and pinion mechanism (which required greater precision):

This is a picture of our final machine: