This week, I worked on the motor code upon assembling a first version of our full build. Specifically, now that the laser-cut gear and rack is finalized, I was able to do proper load testing on the motor. I was aiming to meet our main design requirements, namely, speed, accuracy, and anti-jamming. I was able to get accurate positioning, except for times when one of the pins lagged behind due to printing imperfections. I also observed that my anti-stall code also worked to stop the motor upon detected a jam. I still need to work on homing after a jam since I faced some issues with the motor starting up again very slowly at first which would sometimes just raise another stall error. There were also issues with speed since I have not connected the motor driver to higher than Vcc 5V.
Progress is on schedule but there is much fine-tuning to do as we complete our final print. Next week, I plan to experiment with a higher power source to see if I can achieve improvements on speed while maintaining the torque I already achieved to properly actuate the slider.