This past week I mad a lot of progress on the physical design of the actuation assembly. I have moved forward with a gimbal design with 2 rings one concentrically rotating the other to provide the two axes of rotation that we need to accomplish our designs goals. Crucial to this design was figuring out the different shaft connectors we needed in order to deal with the rotating and non-rotating parts of the assembly. I also realized that given that in the final design the battery will be positioned on the non-rotating part of the pole, while its wires will be connected to the rotating servos, we will need a specialized slip ring wire part in order to ensure that the wires do not get continually twisted.
Next week will be all about 3D printing an iteration of the assembly which doesn’t use the umbrella at first so that we can test the hardware and software. I will be using the TechSpark 3D printers to accomplish this and will also use this as an opportunity to test the strength of a PLA based print and see if we might require a higher strength material for the final assembly.