Week of November 9

This week was the beginning of the long process of manufacturing our machine. On Sunday, we met as we usually do in the Undergraduate Library where we came up with a schedule for the week. We wanted to get all of our engineering for the entire machine done, as well as update our CAD drawings and solid model with this. We also wanted to make our scissor arms, hopper top, pins, hopper columns, cross pieces and horizontal supports, and the spring plates. This collection of parts and pieces required a great enough variety of machining processes that it would fulfill our requirement for MS7.

On Monday, we went for it all and decided to cut our scissor arms and hopper top out of the acrylic on the laser cutter. We were pretty excited, but we had some trouble with scaling in the Bobcad program for the laser cutter. After having to entirely redraw our parts on the computer in the machine shop, we successfully cut out the scissor arms, but the hopper top came out very wrong, with holes way too small and edges not parallel. Luckily, we had extra acrylic, so we decided we would work out those problems and try again later in the week. We were also able to cut out all 13 of our 1" pins for the scissor arm joints out of the 1/4" aluminum rod on the band saw.

On Wednesday, we came prepared with another file for the hopper top, with everything saved in english units (which seemed to be our problem from Monday), and cut the hopper top out with relative ease. We also cut out the longer pins for the scissor arms that go through the scissor arm bases, and cut the scissor arm bases to length on the band saw. We also spent a lot of time working on the motor assignment.

On Friday, we cut out the top of the cart out of plywood on the band saw and set up for the holes in the scissor arm bases. We were hoping to have gotten those cut, but we didn't have some of the correct drawings with us, so we had to wait until this coming week.

Throughout the week, we were busy setting up trades to get some of the extra materials we need. The Victors agreed to give us 6" of 1/4" rod for 4" of the 90 degree angle stock, and Team 42 gave us their 24" of aluminum tube stock for the remaining 8" of our 90 degree angle stock. We also purchased a package of caps for our 1/4" pins for the scissor arms from McMaster-Carr.

Please enjoy this video of the laser cutter. It is awesome.