HTMAA 2024 - Jonathan Cohen
It was all a group assignment! Our task was to design, build and automate a machine. We nominated Jessica to be our fearless leader and then they asked me to be a helper in the brainstorms and with organizing.
Jessica and I hosted two fun brainstorms (others might disagree). I was half-joking but also actually wanting to build a L-mount laser ranging system to measure the distance to the moon by using the retroreflective boxes left on the surface of the moon but the TAs were skeptical that we would be allowed to use multiple watt lasers :(
After we landed on the idea of building a coin flipping decision making robot I made a very rough diagram to make sure that we all were taking about the same thing. The machine will flip a coin and then cross out items on a list until only one item remains.
I helped divide everyone up into teams and then I was guilted into leading the MechE team. I then divided up the MechE tasks systems across the systems and subsystems.
In order to get the basic machine built we put 5/6 FDM printers to work since no one was using them after hours. Kyle and Jonny focused on getting the xyz built. We decided to go with a simple cartesian design with one dedicated motor for x and another y. For the Z axis we used the micro servo to control the height of the pen. This was a kind gesture to our software and ee teams to avoid complexities. Our Z was modeled after the hackclub blot. Kyle built the XY while Jonny focused on the Z.
CAD of the Z axis after making it a bit longer and adding an additional screw for clamping the sharpie
Here is after we assembled the drawing half of the machine.
We modeled, cut, 3d printed, and then assembled the drawing machine and was ready for bringup on saturday morning. I a lot of time in the lab helping the other MechE's with CAD and fabrication so they could get unblocked. There are some other minor tasks I worked on like strain relief, hardnesses, and documenting MechE work for the main website.
The machine decided it's own name to be Decisionmaker 9000. We shot a 90s style infomercial. Please watch it here You can see me weara cool an oversized suit