Theo received the suction cup we were waiting on this week and began working on it. It can hold and let go of objects as heavy as a phone, and he was able to make a right-angled connection between the suction cup and the tubing. This is important for the last design component of the manipulator: a 3D printed part that connects the suction cup to a bearing on the stepper motor, centering it with the shaft. He’s already started working on this and will have it ready to print before Wednesday.
Sophia, with Theo’s help, solved what was wrong with the NAPS2 code so the scanner controller software works. She’s started working on the Main.py file that will connect together the scanner controller, the microcontroller manipulator device, the image processing, and the Blender add-on UI.
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A risk that is coming to light in our design choices thus far is the 3D printed mount’s smoothness while sliding up and down the pillars on our manipulator. This issue is mainly due to the tolerances on the mount’s holes. We’ve needed to reprint it multiple times while making the holes larger, and this issue affects the holes the stepper motor will go into as well. If the holes are made large enough but the sliding still isn’t smooth, we are considering linear bearings on the pillars/mount to ensure smooth motion. We’ll weigh the costs and benefits of this change if it proves necessary.
The schedule has not changed significantly. Even though Yon’s subsystem is a little behind due to him being sick last week, we worked in some padding to the implementation of the entire image processing system which leaves the schedule unchanged.