Sorry, the previous post of our video did not upload properly.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
10 Days until Slot Bot Competition!
The slot bot competition is in 10 days and we still have a lot of work to do.
This is a video of our functioning MCM. This is the front flipper arm that will slide down to open the flipper. The head of the arm is hinged so it will fit within the 12"x12"x24" starting size requirements. The arm will be mounted onto our base plate and the arm will be moved with our motor using a rack and pinion.
The bearings of our flipper arm were the most challenging design aspect of our MCM. The Delrin bearings clipped into place, just as we had planned.
We have finished finalizing our design and the components for our machine. For MS8 we completed the drawings the bill of materials for each piece of our machine.
In order to make our design easier to fabricate we have designed our machine to use the same pieces in multiple locations. This will allow us to make duplicates of a piece rather than making many different types of pieces.
We have reserved machine time of the mill and lathe for next week. We hope to have finished all our parts by the end of the week to use next week for troubleshooting. We have 22 different drawings for the types of pieces we will fabricate.
Below is an example of some of the pieces we are currently working on. Each pieces is sitting on top of its respective SolidWorks drawing.
We hope to update our blog with more finished piece pictures and have assembly done by mid-week!
This is a video of our functioning MCM. This is the front flipper arm that will slide down to open the flipper. The head of the arm is hinged so it will fit within the 12"x12"x24" starting size requirements. The arm will be mounted onto our base plate and the arm will be moved with our motor using a rack and pinion.
The bearings of our flipper arm were the most challenging design aspect of our MCM. The Delrin bearings clipped into place, just as we had planned.
In order to make our design easier to fabricate we have designed our machine to use the same pieces in multiple locations. This will allow us to make duplicates of a piece rather than making many different types of pieces.
We have reserved machine time of the mill and lathe for next week. We hope to have finished all our parts by the end of the week to use next week for troubleshooting. We have 22 different drawings for the types of pieces we will fabricate.
Below is an example of some of the pieces we are currently working on. Each pieces is sitting on top of its respective SolidWorks drawing.
Monday, November 22, 2010
MS7 Manufacturing
For assignment MS7 our group decided to manufacture the end piece of the flipper arm and the clip-in bearings which allow the flipper arm to slide.
The clip-in bearings were laser cut from the sheet of polyoxymethylene (more commonly know by DuPont's trade name, Delrin). Although we felt our design would function properly, we were advised to only cut out one clip to double check that we were correct. Fortunately, we designed the clip properly and it will be able to clip in. The clips will guide the inner part of the flipper arm while allowing it to glide through easily.
The end piece of the flipper arm required two main pieces to be manufactured: the support piece and the arm grabbing piece. The support piece was fabricated from 1/2 inch square stock. The material was cut to length and then the square section was milled out. Holes were drilled into the piece for attachment to the grabbing piece.
Finally, the grabbing piece was manufactured. In order to create the bend in out piece of aluminum, we first had to anneal metal. The purpose of annealing is to heat the metal above the recrystallization temperature create a homogeneous structure. This in turn will induce increase ductility and relieve internal stresses in the material. After we annealed the metal, we quickly quench using water. The pieces was then bent to approximately 30 degrees (+/- 10 degrees) and holes were drilled using the mill. The support piece and the grabbing pieces were attached to create the end piece of our flipper arm.
The clip-in bearings were laser cut from the sheet of polyoxymethylene (more commonly know by DuPont's trade name, Delrin). Although we felt our design would function properly, we were advised to only cut out one clip to double check that we were correct. Fortunately, we designed the clip properly and it will be able to clip in. The clips will guide the inner part of the flipper arm while allowing it to glide through easily.
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| Delrin Clip-In Bearings |
The end piece of the flipper arm required two main pieces to be manufactured: the support piece and the arm grabbing piece. The support piece was fabricated from 1/2 inch square stock. The material was cut to length and then the square section was milled out. Holes were drilled into the piece for attachment to the grabbing piece.
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| Aluminum Support Piece |
Finally, the grabbing piece was manufactured. In order to create the bend in out piece of aluminum, we first had to anneal metal. The purpose of annealing is to heat the metal above the recrystallization temperature create a homogeneous structure. This in turn will induce increase ductility and relieve internal stresses in the material. After we annealed the metal, we quickly quench using water. The pieces was then bent to approximately 30 degrees (+/- 10 degrees) and holes were drilled using the mill. The support piece and the grabbing pieces were attached to create the end piece of our flipper arm.
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| Assembled Grabbing Piece and Support Piece |
Monday, November 15, 2010
Finalizing Our Design
This week our team focused on material selection. First we focused on material selection for machined parts and we also determined which parts we want to order. As time and quality are limiting factors in our manufacturing process, we want to allocate our resources accordingly. We will be ordering certain parts we will not be able to manufacture in our given time or that we do not have the expertise to manufacture to the degree of precision we desire.
We have also continued to improve our design to use our resources wisely. We have re-designed the end piece of our flipper arm. Our first design was over complicated and would require a large solid piece of stock material to be laser cut. Our new design can be made from smaller stock material using the milling machine. We have also determined the motor mounting position for our moving arms.
We continue to finalize our design and we hope to start machining our parts early this week.
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| Original Flipper Arm End Piece |
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| Flipper Arm Motor Mount |
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Most Critical Module
Our team has decided our most critical module is our flipper locking arm. This is the most critical module because without gaining access to the flipper we will not be able to score. We are still working on the other modules and trying to think of ways to play the game more offensively.
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