Horsebot - Printing out the Pieces

It came time to print out the pieces for our horsebot... and we encountered some complications.

Recall that we wanted to test out using the music wire or the teflon rod for the joints of the horse. However, the holes when using the music wire must be drilled for accuracy. However, we needed the laser cutter to make the specific measurements for where the holes would be on their pieces. We asked the ninja for a solution to this dilemma and what he came up with was this: create a teeny tiny hole in solidworks so that the laser cutter doesn't actually make a hole but just makes enough of a marker so that we can tell where the drill them ourselves. So on solidworks we made the holes .02 mm.

To make the comparison between the two joints we decided to make one side of the horse for each joint. But we can't keep the same solidworks pieces and print out the parts for both joints at once but we had to print out one side and then go back and changes the dimensions and print out the other side. This proved to be extremely time consuming because there is always a line for the laser cutter.

Another problem we encountered when printing the parts out was that our connector/"femur" pieces weren't turning completely red. It had a layer of red and a layer of grey/black and so the laser printer didn't read it just as a cut. As it turns out it wasn't too much of a problem but the laser cutter did etch the lines first before it went back and actually cut through them.

Once our pieces were all cut out we had to drill all of the holes for the wire. This was difficult considering we made our bushings so tiny and holes had to be drilled into them. Luckily my partner is very skilled at using this drill having used it many times before and was able to wonderfully drill all of the holes.

One thing we noticed with the pieces with the teflon rods and joints was that some of the bushings were put too close on the drawing because they somewhat melted into each other. That's one mistake we will be careful to avoid in the future. the circle piece was also melted slightly so we decided that that had to be enlarged to avoid this melting.

The next part in the process is assembling everything, making our motor, figuring out what joints we are going to use and printing out and building the other half of the horse. Not to mention all of the iterations and small changes that we have to do in the process to make it all work.