Progress Snapshots
Auto-Routers and Their Auto-Routing
Auto-routers are really awesome tools in my opinion, but sometimes they don’t do what you want, or they can’t solve your board, or you’ve placed some of your own traces and they’re getting in the way and you need to move them before trying again.
The World of Solidworks vs Reality
When I had originally made the CAD drawing I had made the Scan Tower Base structure one solid block with holes made as needed. In reality you have to find a way to machine it and either use glue or screws to keep it together. That means my floating limit switches in Solidworks need actual mounting holes and not just willpower.
Electrical Update!
The good news: after last semester, most of the electrical components were already selected and we had a schematic diagram. The bad news...
What's in a name?
Unlike in Romeo and Juliet, calling a card by any other name would not smell as sweet (or as accurate).
Some Pizazz for the Wizard
After a meeting to choose a project name for our brochure we ended up with two contenders; Cardobot and CardWizard. We sat on the names for a week, in case we suddenly came up with anything else. No other names came. The compromise was then to use Cardobot as the name but make references to wizards in our slogan.
Starting the Tower!
And so the official construction of the Cardobot scan tower has begun. Here's the 3D printed elevator platform. Took almost 6hrs!
Assessing the Situation
Before we started getting into the nitty gritty details of this project, we took a survey of the local Waterloo Magic:The Gathering community to figure out our objectives, constraints, and criteria. More than 30 people responded, and the data that we collected was useful in guiding the direction of the project.