The beginning of this week was spent getting ready for the demo on Wednesday. I measured the dimensions and cut the hole in the base-board for the water cup. I also drew out dimensions for a second hole in case we needed a clean water cup and a dirty one. I had to learn to use the mechanical tools since Chris had been doing the work on the physical system before. One of the problems we were facing was that the motors would sometimes get stuck and not complete the entire motion of the stroke. This was a major problem, so I tried to see if using lubricant would help reduce friction and make the gantry operate more smoothly. I found several different types of lubricants in the Makerspace, including grease, WD-40, and another aerosol based lubricant. The first aerosol based lubricant didn’t do much. However, WD-40 worked much better and noticeably reduced the jerkiness of the robot. The second part of the week was spent on creating the presentation slides for this week.
This week, we all worked together to reduce errors in our system, as well as start creating the slides. Our project is now something we can demo. I was on schedule for this week. The next week will be spent trying to make our gantry system more robust. Most of our limitations are now in the physical system, and we will work on adding the torsioner, reducing friction, and making any other optimizations we can think of.