The Reading Week that I Lived at Watimake
Oof where do I even start. This week was a windmill of CADing, assembling prototypes, and learning that not all filaments are great to 3D print with.
First, a gallery of all the design that went into the parts:
It turned out that plywood is in low stock at Watimake and that it warps very easily so a decision was made to move to basswood. This came with it's own set of problems. It was no longer 12 x 24 inches but 4 x 24 inches and the price was twice as much. The press-fit and aesthetic of basswood as well as lack of warping made the change worthwhile.
Below is the process of lasercutting the wood, and the finished products!
The 3D printing of the elevator platform was its own adventure. The first version was made using ABS filament and it turned out that the material slightly shrinks the CAD dimensions. Another resized version was printed to compensate for this but disaster struck and it snapped during a stress test. I am glad I checked that it was durable but holding the broken pieces in my hands when moments ago it was whole was a pretty sad time. At this point I was told by a classmate that PLA is a better material to print with. He was in fact very right. The warping I got when printing the bucket tree motor part and elevator platform vanished. However, I had to resize things again. The final platform and bucket tree part are a nice bright red!
While all this 3D printing was happening there was also laser cutting under way. The prototype was cut using clear 1.5mm acrylic to save on cost even though it is much more brittle. After 3 iterations I was happy with the results! I sent the group excited pictures of the half assembled part, but I'm not quite sure if they knew what they were looking at.
The final 3D print of the week included the Pi platform, swivel head T-elbow, and swivel motor platform all in one go. I really lucked out with these because only the Pi platform ended up having to be re-printed.
Below we have some 3D printed parts, as well as their finals prints
