7/14/14 RIT Gauntlet, Roboarm, and Printer Problems

The RIT Gauntlet was finished today.  It printed beautifully.  Cleaning out the supports was a pain, but in the end it looks good.  Once the fingers are done, it will be ready to be assembled.

Today we began the assembly of John's roboarm.  We put bearings in all the fingers, and screwed the halves of the fingers together.  However, we can't continue the assembly of this project until the motors for the fingers arrive.

Assembled fingers and unfinished palm

Due to problems with one of the Maker Bots being jammed in both extruders, we were unable to have the fingers for the RIT arm printed for the day, and we were unable to print the first test of the snap fit we decided on for the modular hand.  Here's a picture of the snap fit we plan on applying to the Cyborg Beast.

Before the printer jammed up Frankie showed both Sam and I how to use both the vinyl cutter and there 40 watt laser engraver/cutter. We printed a stack of Storm Trooper stickers and engraved a Storm Trooper on a piece of wood.

One of the stickers on my laptop!

While the printer was jammed it gave me (Alex) some time to get back into Rhino working on ways to make the current Cyborg Beast hand design easier to print. My main areas of focus are eliminating external hardware (Chicago screws) by using 3D printed pins and making parts printable without support. Support used in 3D printing adds print time and ends up getting thrown away and wasted. I haven't really gotten very far in this project but I plan to work on it heavily this week.

I plan on replacing most all Chicago screws with 3D printed pins (shown in red above)

Overall today wasn't as productive as it could have been with one of the printers being down but we still managed to make the best of our down time and learn some cool new skills!

Alex + Sam