This week, I focused on prototyping the vertical aiming system and the radial aiming system. The feedback we got from the proposal presentation didn’t have major concerns with the mechanical portion of the design, so I started designing on Solidworks. We plan to build the robot’s scaffold to be laser cut from a 3/16″ thickness hardboard.
During the design, I’ve noticed that I would need the dimensions of the motors as a baseline, so I’ve also done some research on the parts we will use. For the radial aiming system, we’d need a stepper motor. The parameters that’s relevant for the purpose of radial aiming is low step angle for precise control, and high torque as lots of weight will be on the lazy susan base. The price has to be reasonable, and the speed of the motor is not relevant for our purpose. We came across this motor that meets the requirements, so we plan on placing the order for this part soon.
The the vertical aiming, we are still debating between using a linear actuator or using another stepper motor and using a string to coil to control the PVC pipe. We plan on fleshing out this design sometime next week as we prepare for the design proposal presentation, and order the necessary parts.
We are ahead of the schedule according to the Gantt chart, and by next week I plan to have a fully fleshed-out Solidworks design and have all the necessary parts ordered.
