Week of November 30

This week we spent a lot of time in the shop finalizing our machine. We used the laser cutter to make our joint and cut some PVC pipe to make the arm. We assembled our second planetary gear box and began putting together the entire machine. By Friday we had completed the entire machine and almost finished assembling everything together.

While assembling all of our parts together we discovered some major design problems with the overall machine. For example the joint does not sit level on the rods connected to the body so when the motor is run the joint twists and the gear slips off the rack and we can not move the joint up and down as we had planned.

The gear connected to the second planetary gear box and the gear connected to the arm axle are not perfectly aligned because the axles connecting the gears are not fully constrained. When the motor is run the gears become misaligned and the arm axle does not rotate. The motor also can not supply enough torque to lift the weight of the arm.


Hopefully after some final tweaks our machine will be able to compete and perform successfully as we had originally planned!


Here are a few pictures of our final machine: