This week, all the parts for the gantry, except the linear slides, arrived. I am still working on designing 3D-printed brackets for the gantry mechanism. However, I wired up the electronics and deployed my exisiting software work.
I was able to set up force-sensing resistors and read values from them on an ESP32. Characterizing relationship between voltage and force might require some data collection, since the vendor documentation is somewhat lacking. This took longer than expected because of difficulties in finding the right toolchain for flashing my code to the ESP32. I ended up using Arduino IDE, but I would like to set up the ESP-IDF library and toolchain at some point.
I also completed the software for sending position commands to the stepper motors and wired up the stepper motors and demo these commands. The choice to use 3D printer driver boards really sped up the whole process compared to using individual motor drivers: all I needed to do was plug in the motors and send Gcode commands over serial .The power supply arrived, but the casing was damaged so I was not sure if it was safe to use since the casing is metal. However, I was able to overcome this by susbstituting the power supply module with a laptop charger.
My goal next week would be to finish building the XY axes of the gantry, including 3D printed parts. I am also aiming to build a prototype gripper mechanism.
See the stepper motor setup here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oAM67E24leO2Pc1g6S6h67MTfPZt7vkb/view?usp=sharing
ESP32 setup:
