Mounting and placement

After we had settled on the mechanical, 3D printed and electrical component we had to make a "casing" everything could be mounted on. To make it as small as possible, wires and legs on electrical components were cut and LEGO components where replaced with shorter ones.

The prototyping started with testing different kinds of placement for the all the components and different kinds of structures for the casing which was made rapidly out of cardboard to test the ideas. The microswitches were especiallydifficult to place in a way the switches would be turned on when the plate was about to rotate too much.

Microswitch test/placement

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After several iterations with the structure of the case and placement of the components, things were settled and we could move on to make the case out of a more robust material.

We quickly found out the most important and difficult thing about the casing was to make the holes which hold the stabling axis for the gearbox. If the holes were a little too big or small, a little crooked or the three holes were off by the slightest the gearbox would end up tilted and loose, which affects overall performance.

After several attempts, we finally managed to get the holes exactly as we wanted them and could start begin wiring and assembling the casing.

With or without gearing?

One of the big problems in the beginning of the three week project, was that our stepper motor had a hard time rotating the plates and leaves. Though as we advanced, we had now made several iterations and optimization on these things. This resulted in a reduced weight and a smoother motion compared to the first iterations, so the motor didn’t have to work as hard to actuate the motion. With this in mind we wanted to test if the gearbox we had built in the beginning was still necessary to actuate the motion. See prototype planner: With or Without gearing

We found out that even though it wasn’t necessary to use the gearbox anymore, it still had a big advantage. The downgearing allowed the motor to operate at higher RPM's, resulting in less noise when running.