This week, our team made major progress on building the gantry. Because of the interim demo, the majority of our time was focused on building the initial gantry and integrating it with the software. The build was close to finished early in the week after extensive troubleshooting, laser cutting, and 3D-printing.
On the software side, we made progress on integrating the Flask website with the motion control system. The website can now handle PDF uploads and automatically convert them to SVG files. Although we initially planned to host the site and run the converter on the Raspberry Pi 5, we ran into some connection issues. As a temporary solution, we configured the system to operate locally for the interim demo.
We also worked on the motor control to make sure that the movement of the gantry matched the actual drawing. We are planning to finalize preparations for the interim demo and then begin designing and ordering parts for the final vertical gantry structure. We had a design change for the vertical gantry structure as we decided to extend our gantry vertically enough to cover close the the height of a standard whiteboard. This makes it so that we can focus more on the horizontal movement of the gantry on wheels, as well as perhaps implementing additional features. It will also free up some budget for the horizontal movement.
We will also decide on the final SVG conversion component, comparing results between the SpirePDF and the alternative converter. We have caught up to our initial schedule and we’re confident in the progress we made this week.