Getting Physical (Week 4)

This week, we finished setting in the three CNC machines for the different axes. The video to the right shows the movement of each of the machines. This is basically all of the physical components we are going to have for the final printer. We are just missing the mechanism that would feed the chocolate onto the printing platform. This would include nuzzle, pressure gauge, pump, and a holding tank for the chocolate.





The wiring is more or less finished - we just need to solder it completely in. Here, the Arduino (blue) is wired to a breadboard (white), which is then wired directly to the CNC machines. The breadboard was used for prototyping before we finalize the build and solder the wires in. The red piece on the breadboard is the step motor driver.

The flow of the contraption is that the Arduino would send it a gcode. This gcode would contain the coordinates of where the CNC machines need to go. Our first attempt of getting the machine to work was a failure. However, this is a learning experience and we will learn what went wrong and fix the issue.

We hope to fix the code, and have a working one by next week. At the same time, other members not working on the code would devise a way to set up the chocolate delivery portion of the project.




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