Six month recap

So it's been six months since we began this project, and I thought it would be a good idea to recap everything that's been accomplished up to this point. We started out this project both as a learning opportunity and the chance to be a part of something that we think is the future. While progress has been achingly slow, I think we've learned quite a bit along the way and I'm proud of what we've been able to do given our novice nature. Here's a brief overview of what we've done:

-Completed design and construction of belt-drive xy positioning system (with the unique angle-running bearings)
-Completed design and construction of leadscrew-driven cantilever z stage
-Completed design and construction of (almost all) extruder components




To make this post a little less about just pondering, here's a snapshot of the mechanical components of the extruder hot assembly, which we managed to complete in the first few days of our return to class. As David described in an earlier post, the filament is pushed from the cold end (see next picture) through the teflon tubing all the way into the aluminum heater block (which itself took me seven hours to machine). Pioneered by Nophead, this minimizes the heat zone and should hopefully minimize the force needed to push the filament through. The internal stainless steel (which was used because of its relatively low thermal conductivity) barrel has an internal thread that matches an external thread on the tubing, which means the teflon tube shouldn't pop out of the assembly because of extrusion pressure.










In this photo we have once again the nearly completed extruder cold end. As you can see the only things that have been added are the teflon tubing and the Delrin plunger. The drive shift still needs to be hobbed, but aside from that it appears the actual machining of the entire robot is complete. We've been told by our machining friend Kal to expect an actual short run production cost of about 510 dollars just for the machining of the structural pieces, so a second model (if there ever is one) will need to be more optimized to reduce the cost and make it easier and quicker to assemble.








So what's next? On top of our second year studies in Engineering at Waterloo (which are sure to be busy), we'll be looking to implementing the pololu based electronics and hopefully begin testing of the axes and installing the electronics to actually extrude something. Knowing the problems that plague makerbot and reprap users however (and briefly experiencing them as well before shifting over to construction of our design), I feel like there is a lot of frustration and hair-tearing along the way. But it will all be worth it in the end, knowing that we as novice engineering students are capable (with a lot of research and help) of going in way over our heads and turning an idea into an actual working machine.

Failure or success, here's to the next 6 months.

-Eric