This week, we mainly test and debug the magnetic levitation device.
Things we Learnt:
The movement during magnetic levitation without magnetic interference is pretty robust and stable as long as there are no sudden stop.
The maglev device can adapt to a wide range of weight and magnetic magnitude for the go piece.
The maglev device requires a very high x-y accuracy to pick up magnet from rest for levitation.
The interference to and from the maglev device to surrounding magnet is larger than expected: around 130 mm to ensure stableness during testing.
The current main risk is that according to the interference distance, the grid cell size will be much larger than we expected. We will have to test for locking mechanism together with the maglev device to finalize the grid cell size, and change the board size or game size accordingly as mitigation.
For next week, we will mainly test for locking interference with maglev, assemble the gantry and see if it can reach the desired accuracy for consistent maglev pickup.