we all love fractals!
for this assignment we each made a stage and selected another contribution to the mechanical aspect of the machine. after discussing with the group- we decided to make a fractal-making machine.
i created one stage, and the end effector, a 3-D-printed pencil holder, for the machine.
for the stage we made sure to get flat high-quality cardboard. on our 75 watt epilog laser printer i used 50/50/500 to etch, and 25/60/500 to cut, which gave a very clean edge on the first cut. we also manually focused, and cleaned the lens each time. even though we each made our own stages we worked well as a group.
click here for file
for the end effector, i looked on thingiverse and saw one million things and as i kept searching new keywords, i was spending so much time id ecided to create a minimalist holder using antimony. with the group, i sketched the thought, measured the dimensions of the pencil (later to realize that i made it a bit too big to fit in the housing). using Antimony ilaid out 2 shapes (circle and hexagon), extruded them, got the difference, and subtracted a cyclinder for the screw hole. i then exported as .stl, took into makerware, and printed using PLA on the z18. it still needs a bit of tweaking... i forgot to take into consideration the difference in the file and the printed product. it was slightly too small, and so i ended up shaving a bit of the pencil to fit it in.
click the photo below for video of manual movement of the machine.
combining the three stages that each of us made, we decided to configure in the shape of the letter "H" to give it stability and smoothness of motion, as well as allow the paper to be beneath it on the table.
we have the components to our machine made, and are continuing to create the programming. i am researching simple equations that will yield an ongoing drawing based on an iterative equation such as the one below, and will confer with the team as to how best translate it for the plotter.
click the photo below to see video of our nodes successfully communicating and driving several motors at once.
click here for our lab's page and our collective presentation video.