Our group met Tony for the first time today and he felt that our project was too optimistic to be done within a couple of months. This was largely attributed to a great lack of knowledge with automation, pneumatic actuators and motors. Fortunately, we got to have a watch party with Tony today 😀 where he explained to us the complexity of dumpling machines to us.
Some of the issues include:
- Components of dumpling machines are notoriously expensive.
- Arduino boards may have insufficient computing power.
- Consider buying some of the parts, especially the meat dispenser as it is very complex.
It was relatively demoralizing as most of our ideas were deemed unfeasible. 🙁 However, we still had to get on track and construct an alternative design, with fewer motors and potentially replace motors with mechanical guides instead to reduce the amount of coding we require.
Tony also gave us more advice on our project.
- Read up more about machine movement – motors that drive it, relevant programs and feedback system involved in machine movement.
- Include motion in drawing to visualize the difficulty of project.
- Not advisable to have so many motors, find ways to reduce it.