Day 1 - Getting Started
Hello world and welcome to the little corner of the internet reserved for my engineering shenanigans. I have finally won the battle against my perfectionism and anxiety about posting my work online, but that has left me a little behind with the whole blog aspect of this module. So, I’m opting for the chaotic approach to this assignment and I’m going to post updates every day, both to make sure I get everything done and to hold myself accountable. Hopefully it works. Pray for me.
What is this assignment you ask? You didn’t? Well I’m going to tell you anyway. We have been tasked with assembling and modifying the Elegoo Tumbller robot (picture below) to allow it to work its way through a basic maze and catch a ping pong ball launched from a machine of our own design. There may also a Rube Goldberg machine involved at some point. More on that later.
Step 1- Basic CAD
As you can imagine there are quite a few parts to this assignment but step one began before the delivery of the kits to assemble the buggy. I first wanted to make a basic outline of the structure on Solidworks that could easily be modified once we had more accurate dimensions etc.
In this first iteration of the CAD parts, I only made the components that make up the outer body of the robot. As I was guessing the dimensions from the pictures online, I wanted to be able to edit it all easily enough. This was actually a fun little refresher on all of the Solidworks from last year and also a lovely wake up call for my poor little laptop. She tries so very had but she really isn’t cut out for all the engineering software this pandemic has forced her to run. And before you ask; yes my laptop is a she, no it is not up for debate.
The pictures below of some of the individual parts (wheel, motor, base plate) show some of the various Solidworks functions used in the build. The mirror and circular patterns were particularly useful for the pattern of holes on the plates and for the wheel. I kept all of the features quite basic as I planned to come back to them and refine when adding the more detailed parts. I’m still not fully happy with the features on the wheel part but after attempts to improve it crashed the program twice, I realised I had bigger fish to fry.
Hope you enjoyed this quick intro to my blog, check back daily for updates on my progress and more sarcastic quips.
