Exercise 11 - Machine Design

Click here to view the group Machine Design page.

Assignment for this week

• Group assignment - make a machine, including the end effector, build the passive parts and operate it manually
• Group assignment - automate your machine
• Document the group project and your individual contribution

Workload Distribution

Before we proceed to work on automating the machine, the group has met, discuss and distribute the workload as follows for this week machine design:

• Software needed to automate the machine - (Jeff/Ngiap Peng/Tiang Seih)
• Program and Test out in Windows platform - (Jeff/Ngiap Peng/Tiang Seih)
• Program and Test out in Ubuntu platform - (Hong Guan)
• Program and Test out in Mac platform - (Louis)
• Connecting the MTM Kit and Test Run on the Axis - (Ngiap Peng/Jeff/Louis/Hong Guan/Tiang Seih)
• Test the machine using hard coded coordinates on shapes and text
• Text - (Ngiap Peng/Louis)
• Shapes - (Jeff/Hong Guan/Tiang Seih)
• Documentation
• Creating/Updating the Group and Machine Design Page - (Louis/Tiang Seih)
• Photographer - (Hong Guan)
• Videographer - (Louis)
• Poster design for the MTM Group Page - (Hong Guan)
• Video creation for the MTM Group Page - (Louis)
• MTM Presentation - (Tiang Seih)

My contribution

In this group project on machine design, I was involved in the following area:

• Program and Test out in Mac platform
• Test the machine using hard coded coordinates on shapes and text - Text
• Creating/Updating the Group and Machine Design Page
• Videographer
• Video creation for the MTM Group Page

Trying out in Mac

The reason why Mac is used in this section as research purpose. In any case of Windows is not working, we have something as a backup.

As Mac is not 100% Python ready, we need to install python and setup the pyserial on Mac. Read it here

To install in Mac, we need to download 2 things. One from Nadia and the other pySerial.

On Mac Os installing PySerial & pyGestalt from the Terminal:

1. Download the Nadia Peek pyGestalt zip file.
2. Navigate in the command line where your pyGestalt folder is located.
3. Run the command: sudo python setup.py install, if you are using a sharing account, it is recommended to use an admin account as password is required to install using Sudo in Mac.

You should see something like this

Test the machine using hard coded coordinates on shapes and text - SP

I was tasked to try to draw out a simple text, SP. My group mate Steven Foo taught me to draw up a graph and draw up the coordinates. Because the machine's (0,0) is at the bottom right of the graph(based on our findings), we had to move the machine coordinate to negative value to move it to the left hand side.

Creating/Updating the Group and Machine Design Page & Video creation for the MTM Group Page

I was tasked to work on the landing page (here)with Steven Foo.

I was also responsible to collate the video for the MTM group project, the program I used was Da Vinci Resolve.