Ella’s Status Report for 2/14

This week I designed, spec’ed, and 3D modeled (Solidworks) our pan and tilt movement mechanisms. Putting things in Solidworks was mainly for my own peace of mind and ensuring that everything will fit as I anticipated (as much as I can tell from online models and dimensions) so that I could have more confidence ordering. I also designed and spec’ed the focus mechanism, but I’m waiting to see what lens etc we choose to use before I figure out how much travel distance we need to get the focus that we want. We are thus far on schedule which is great, and I’m excited for parts to come in so we can start really getting into it. I also helped make the slides for our upcoming Design Presentation this week. This upcoming week, I’m hoping that the motors and other stuff that we ordered will arrive (hopefully they were ordered on Thursday). If they do come in, I intend to get all 3 of our steppers working. I also intend to model the focus mechanism (at least loosely / with stand-in parts). Either this week or the week after, I intend to start trying to fit our mechanisms together and designing and prototyping the 3D printed elements to make sure that we have a smooth process later on and don’t run into a time crunch down the line.