Week 11
Machine Week
This week was a group project to build a machine. The eecs section decided on making a cocktail machine. You can read about the whole project here:
EECS Section Site
I'll go into depth on my part. I was responsible for the liquid pumps for the project. I watched some youtube videos on how to make a peristaltic pump and then started CAD-ing. The main issue was that we didn't have tubing. We ordered it on amazon and it was supposed to arrive sunday night which was already a little late to be working on it, but that was the best we could find. Then it got lost in the amazon abyss :(. So we ordered some more to get there monday night. In the mean time, Anthony found us some tubing that was maybe not the most food safe, but worked for testing. I redesigned it sunday night and got it pumping liquid. The unfortunate thing was that this tubing was 5mm but we ordered 6mm OD tubing. When we got the tubing monday night, it seemed to work in the same design so we full sent and printed a bunch of those. unfortunately on tuesday night, we realized it wasn't creating a good seal and leaking which was bad, and we didn't have a lot of time to iterate, so I did a lot of last minute hacky stuff including adding electrical tape to thicken the walls and doubling the bearing layer.
One issue was that EDS only has 2-ish working printers so we were somewhat limited in the amount of iterating we could do. Peristaltic pumps are pretty finnicky so this was unfortunate. Depending on where the machine stops, sometimes the seal is better than others, so I suspect with a redesign instead of using electrical tape to thicken the walls would be more successful.
they work well enough I guess, but the perfectionist in me will forever be unhappy I couldn't get them perfect
Fun side note: I managed to make something entirely un-disassemble-able. Quentin, Jake, Anthony, Sam and I all tried. We even got a drill involved, but no luck.
I'll try to add some of my pictures but I'm tired rn cuz I was up till 5am finishing this