Alright so I realized that this piece would be way to big to print on my 3D printer, so i divided it up into 3 pieces and added screw holes. Now, it should fit well within my 180 by 180 bed!
I part-lightened the gantry and I added in linear bearings. I also worked on continuing to fix the assembly and I started to print out pieces of the printer!
Ship
Pending review
Just finished up the documentation for the hackpad!
Sooooo, something I was wondering is: Does the generative design arms I designed actually work? I tested the arms using Onshape’s FEA (Finite Element Analysis) software. I set the bottom and top pieces as fixed for this simulation just to simplify the simulation. In reality, they would deform along with the drone arms. I calculated that each motor would produce around 11.8 newtons. Of course, this doesn’t take in account crashes and such, so I set a roughly 20x safety factor of 250N to take that in account. I designed a quick mock-up of a normal drone arm to compare. I was surprised to see that both arms survived flawlessly! Though, the generative designed arm was lighter at 19.5g compared to the 23g of the traditional design.
Heres the 3D printer so far, I still need to work on the bed, electronics, and the Z-axis. I want this project to be mostly 3D printed. I worked to part-lighten the top and bottom frame pieces just so it looks cooler. I tried to make the leadscrew more 3D printable by increasing the diameter and changing the thread pitch. I think the Z-axis rods need a bit of work though, I’m still not sure if I should use metal ones or make them 3D printable as well.
Just about finished the CAD for my hackpad! My idea for it is for the entire lid to be slid in place like a shelf. Heres a picture of the assembly and a section view!
Today I worked on organizing the part studios into folders and fixing the main assembly. I hadn’t set the limits to the mates yet, so I finished that. The arms are made from fusion 360’s generative design software so they should be stronger by weight than traditional 3D printed drone arms!
