Week15 : Mechanical Design #1

Group assignment documentation page

Assignment requirements:

Node : Fablab Kamakura

Group members :

Downloadable files

What we built

Circuit Plotting Machine Using Conductive Ink (Agic)

Why we built it

Making flexible circuit with vinyl cutter often mentioned in the Fabacademy lectures.

However, it requires certain degree of mastery and a lot of effort (time) to make such flexible boards with vinyl cutter. Therefore, we’d like to implement conductive ink pens with CNC plotting machine to achieve rapid fabrication of flexible circuits.

How we did it

Materials we referd to:

1. Rapid prototyping

In order to grasp what we are making, we made mockup Core XY system with card boards.

Get an understanding of how Core XY system works with two key motors.

Draw diagram to clarify how the movement of the stage corresponds to rotation of the motors.

2. Making Core XY system with acrylic housing

This image describes the mechanism we adopted to build Core XY machinary.

We laser-cut 5mm clear acrylic board to make enclosure for our Core XY system.

Brass shafts and linear bushes are from Monotaro: online retailer brand in Japan (Refer to the Bill of material at the bottom of this page).

For the individual documentation regarding design and fabrication process of the acrylic enclosure, check Kai Naito’s documentation page.

In Core XY system, the rubber belts have to be fixed at the stage. We designed and 3D printed parts that can hold four ends of rubber band firmly and slides smoothly on the two center shafts.

Design process documentation is available at Doyo Daisuke’s documentation page.

3. Developing Motor module

The schematic (http://www.instructables.com/id/CoreXY-CNC-Plotter/)

There are two stepping motors for driving Core

We used Marlin, open source 3D printer firmware, to control motors according to the Gcode processed from Inkscape.

To see the developing processes, visit Jun Kawahara’s documentation page.

Issues we had

*For solved issues and how we deal with them, check individual documentation page

Bill of materials


(We ended up not using some of the parts in Ramps kit such as Arduino motor driver shield)

MONOTARO

Amazon

Fablab inventory