Wednesday, April 19, 2017

2017/04/19 - Good News, Bad News

This week has had a lot of positive advancements, but a lot of setbacks as well.

After last Wednesday's class, I met Mr Youseffi to pick up the small clamps. In order to try counteracting the x-y decalibration, we tried a newer 3d printer. We also oriented them in different ways to see if any orientation would work better (ie x vs y axis orientation and flat side up vs flat side down) to see if it would make any difference. When I measured them at home I found that the dimensions along the flat surface was the perfect 1.05", meaning that the x and y servos were in perfect order. however, along the z axis the combined clamps had a total distance of 1.08", making for a difference of 0.03". Although I was planning on filing the 1.05" diameter a little to let it fit smoothly into the PVC pipe, when I tried to do so with this 1.08 effective diameter I realized that going through the extra 0.03 inches with my hand file was making the surface excessively distorted and uneven. Nonetheless, I made a revision to all of the clamp parts by changing the 1.05" diameters to 1" with the idea that with the smaller size, I could just warp it with blue tape until it can fit snugly into the pipe. Finally, I sent Dr Youseffi these new versions, and hopefully I will have the results today.
The clamps were not the only thing I worked on today. Over the weekend, I worked on dramatically refining my laser cut acrylic pieces and patterns. for starters, I completely removed the 1 piece 2D brackets and the complicated connection system. For this new version, I made it so that the brackets would be composed of  1"x4.5" and 1"x.75" rectangles with holes for screws, Rails for the 1/12 scale car with a cross sections of 0.25"x1.5" and two sets altering 0.25"x0.5" upper support beams, all of which would also use the screw system. The assembly would look something like the blue lines image shown below (which is super imposed over the 1/12 scales groups's existing bracket. However, I will need to devise a way to connect it to pvc pipes and make the upper portion of my braket (keeping the two support beams spaced evenly. In addition, I've also included my current draft for the laser cuttout pattern.
Sadly, my progress with the laser cutter was not as productive. On Monday I was informed that due to a conflict with the laser cutter's driver and modern Windows, the computer that was supposed to be dedicated to the the laser cutter no longer works and so I re downloaded the drivers for it. On Tuesday, I spent two hours attempting to get the lab laser cutter to work with my laptop, but it was a complete failure. As such I contacted Dr. Barez about his departments, laser cutter, who told me that I should contact Dr. Obi, who also told me to contact Mr. Peters and Mr. Meininger.



No comments:

Post a Comment