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Ziyu Li’s Status Report for Feb 24th, 2024

This week I spent a lot of time in CAD software designing our new actuator.

Since we need to rapidly fabricate and test these actuators in different configurations (slider slope, material, lubricate method, form factor of actuator), great care is taken account to parameterize the design (which is both time consuming and rewording for me as a first timer).

One additional thing to emphasize in this report is the original source of this clever mechanism. During this week’s design presentation, I cited the original video from Ulmas Zoirov in the presenter’s note, but not on the slide itself, and this created unintentional confusion about the source of the idea. I apologize for this major oversight, and wanted to emphasize that this is Ulmas Zoirov’s idea, and we mainly want to iterate on this and engineer his vision in real life (since no physical device of this design is ever made, and we could not find further information on the future of his project).

For next week, I will be fabricating these CAD parts using resin 3D printers and experiment with the actuation by hand, to provide an initial feasibility analysis. I will also work on a much more formal and much more in depth design document.

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Team Status Report for Feb 24th, 2024

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project?

Since we have switched to a slider based actuator, the biggest worries are 1. the durability of the actuator, which despite optimization in the design iteration, might still be limited by the nature of the slider mechanic. 2. How do we recover consistently from a slider jam?

How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?

For our existing slider actuator, we will rapidly iterate over the course of next two weeks to try out different motors, slider slope, material, lubricate method, form factor of actuator, sliding speed, etc., to try and find the best combination that can result in the fastest and most consistent actuation of the braille dot patterns. We are cautiously optimistic that this plan will work, but if not, we have back up plans where a group of push-pull solenoid will activate individual ball-pen-like latches.

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

As reference in our design presentation slide, we significantly changed our block diagram to accommodate for the new actuator design. This change is motivated by our quest to find the cheapest and easiest way of actuate a large amount of bi-directional dots.

There are no scheduling changes. For an updated visualization of the actuator, please refer to Ziyu’s status report for this week.

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Ziyu Li’s Status Report for Feb 17th

This week I mainly focused on researching different braille pattern actuation patterns, and coming up with a viable solution that is both cheap and compact. We research three main solution: 1. Electromagnetic actuation, like push-pull solenoid 2. Stepper motor paired with more intricate mechanical design, and 3. A slider solution that is able to enumerate a three-dot pattern, and use two of the same slider config to constitute each braille character. The final solution is what we settled on, as it is a. extremely cheap to implement, b. low fabrication difficulty, and c. is able to provide a close to standard braille pattern size. I am currently working on a full 3D model of this system in CAD, but for reference people can check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTzhWKBfiuk

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Ziyu Li’s Status Report for Feb 10th

This week I put most of my effort into learning PCB design online. Since our project require us to layout linear actuators in a compact way, this would definitely be needed further down the road. No one on the team have any practical experience with this field, so I had to learn from scratch, which was a fun experience. Although our proof of concept will likely not involve any PCB, I would still like to place my one first order within next week, so that we can be sure this won’t be a challenge in the future.

Another thing I worked on is I researched the different mini electromagnetic actuator components that are readily available on the market right now, and locked on a 6mm one that seems to be promising. The idea is we would like to place the order for this component in small amount next week, and test its capabilities. Ideally we can fit some kind of already-existing solutions into our system.