Week-19

                                          Project Development

Assignment

1. complete your final project, tracking your progress:

      what tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?

      what has worked? what hasn't?

      what questions need to be resolved?

      what will happen when?

      what have you learned?

The final Week I am happy to show the progress during the past weeks.

                                What tasks have been completed

The most important task that I feel was the design that what are the elements that I want to make and how my 6 axis arm will work.

I selected 3 different techniques for the construction of the arm :

1. LASER CUTTING

2. 3D Printing

3. Casting/Molding

4. Making my own Arduino board and access the robotic arm with a small remote control that I make.

I have set of tasks that I need to do prior to finish my robotic arm. There are many tasks that I finished during last week.

A) Most Important task is to design the arm and make its 3D to see how the elements and junctions will look and what will be the sizes of the elements.

The first task was complete that I decided the sizes and the proportions of the members of the arm and made a 3D file in rhino.

Then the Base is made that it can rotate and also can be made by laser cutting.

The other important task was to make the gripper for the arm, as I wanted to make my arm as pick and place arm so It can have a gripper as the final element in the arm.

Then the components of the gripper can be made by laser cutting and few components can be 3D printed.

Using all the final components I made my robotic arm so it can be easily constructed once I have all my components.

CODING BEGINS THROUGH A DUMMY ARDUINO MADE ON A BREAD BOARD AND THEN IN ARDUINO UNO BOARD

FIRST SUCCESS OF THE SINGLE SERVO MOTOR WORKING THROUGH THE BUTTON.

 TASKS THAT ARE LEFT TO DO FOR THE ARM

For the final completion of the ARM I need to do few more things that will complete the arm.

1. FIXING ALL THE COMPONENTS AND MAKING THE ARM READY.

2. CODING OF THE ARM TO CHECK THE WORKING THROUGH ARDUINO BASE.

3. MAKING MY OWN ARDUINO BOARD THAT I CAN USE .

WHAT HAS WORKED AND WHAT DIDN'T WORK

The most important thing for me that didn't worked was the design.

Actually earlier I wanted to design arm in a very different way. But later when I considered the size of the motor and the functionality of the motor then I realized that I takes more time to design the components.

Now the components that I have made will work like a kit that I can play with and also extend the arm If I WANT or change any of the arm according to the function.

WHAT QUESTIONS NEED TO BE RESOLVED

I am not a pro for CODING in ArDUINO BUT THERE ARE few doubts in the coding that I need to think of as HOW I will control the arm and how it will move and the controlling of the arm.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN

Actually the fab academy course came to me as a surprise to me. I had never thought that I can do such things neither I can work or make a machine that can really works or can make anything. There are soo many things that I have learned from the course and also from the final project.

Most Important thing is the final project that I worked on and will finally complete it. There are number of things that I have understood and learned from it.

1. Making and understanding how a machine is made.

2. Understood that there are soo many components and there is soo much to consider while making a arm.

3. Making seems too easy when you look at a video but now I can say it takes a lot of work and learnings to actually make such video.

4. There are number of machines that I worked and calibrated:

a) Laser Cutting- As I had few restrictions due to motor and other fix dimensions that I NEED TO KEEP IN MIND. So I  understood how to keep checking and keep working in parallel.

b) 3D Printing - It worked the same way as the laser cut pieces should match the  3d printed elements. So there I learned what speed I really need to print and what are the details to make a strong piece.

c)CODING for the Arduino board for the servo motors. As I had 6 servo motors that are working in my arm. As at first seeing one motor and then check the working of all 6 together.

d) Milling the circuit board and make my own designed board.