13 July, 10:00am, Making & Tinkering Lab
Shawn, Hung, Kang Hao, Xinhui
We had a second presentation outside the M&T lab to update our progress to the professors and lab crew. Afterwards, we discussed the next steps in our plan which includes: test drawing on Rubik’s Cube, fixing the electromagnet position, and developing a web app as an interface to convert an image file to gcode.
We have written a reflective essay prior to the presentation to showcase our thought process along this Making and Tinkering journey:
Like most engineering projects, our very first step was to brainstorm and ideate. We were told that the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas, and so we did exactly that. After a 2-hour Zoom session, our once empty google document was soon filled with an assortment of ideas. All we had to do now was to pick out one that we can all agree on.
Our first idea was to create a sand vacuum machine which can solve beach litter problems in Singapore as there are a lot of litter on our beaches yet volunteering efforts can only do so much. Our robot, which can be operated from a remote control, will be able to move along the beach and sieve out litter such as chopsticks, wrappers, bottles, and caps. We aim to help by filtering out litter from the sand. Our machine can be divided into 3 parts: Rubbish Collection, Filtering, and Storage. We decided on off-road wheels as the base to navigate through the abrasive sand, with conveyor belt wheels as an alternative. We thought of using a shovel-like scoop or a conveyor belt at the front to collect litter, but soon realized that that it obstructs the movements of the vehicle as it has to go beneath the sand to bring up the litter. A filtering cylinder held by a holder with ball bearings and rotating mechanism was decided for the filtering part, but that also has its limitation. In the end, we decided to give up on the sand filtering machine due to two main reasons: ineffective way to filter litter from the beach and low efficiency. We also have difficulties approaching the most important component, filtering, as certain designs would have different dynamics due to the motion of the filter.
Having ran into a dead end, we decided that it was best to switch to another idea. We went back to our Brainstorming.docx for other potential ideas, but to no avail. Distressed, we decided to meet up with Dr Ho for some advice. After explaining our situation to Dr Ho, a suggestion was brought up — using the 3D Printer to draw portraits. Though the idea was good, we thought that we could do better. We then thought of modifying the 3D Printer to write Chinese calligraphy, but later found out that it has been done before, and that it will be hard to mimic the pressure and motion of writing Chinese calligraphy. That was when colouring 3D Objects was brought up. The initial thought was to colour the 3D Prints while rotating it, but we then faced the issue of overhangs and ink sipping through the grooves of the 3D Prints. After hearing about our problem, Hanyang suggested that we narrow down the scope of our project, giving the example of a machine which paints easter eggs. We took the suggestion, and thus finalized on our project idea — drawing on a Rubik’s cube.
The normal Rubik’s cube, with different colours on each side, seemed basic to us, and so we decided to draw pictures it by modifying a 3D Printer. Our project will consist of 4 parts: Picture Editing, Drawing, Changing Sides, and Changing Colour. As a start, we decided to do 1 colour and flip the cube manually. For the picture editing part, we tried out online photo editing apps to turn pictures into art. However, most of them did not work out for our project. Hence, we decided to write a program which converts portraits into line art. Though it is still under trial, it seems to be working well. For the drawing part, we tried to code our own program which generates the Gcode to draw on the Rubik’s cube through dithering, which was not ideal as it takes a long time to draw. We then tried out Cura and Inkscape, which was better as the Gcode generated draws the picture in a line motion instead. For the part on changing side, we researched and tried many methods, having many prototypes in the process. Fortunately, after a few failed attempts, we managed to build one that works with our machine by being inspired by other projects online. For the part on changing colours, we tried to change pens using magnets, which were simply not stable enough, and hard to control. Thus, we decided to turn to electromagnets, which will give us enough control over the grabbing and releasing of different coloured markers.
From hands-on and machinery knowledge to teamwork and soft skills, we had a lot to take home from this project. The process of failing was unironically the most important one and we get to know the importance of planning ahead really saves lots of precious time when prototyping. Many a time, we realised that the best and only way to know whether our idea would work is to build it and try it out, and only through failing can we further improve and optimise our machine. We had a wide range of skillset between us: electrical, mechanical, material and computer science, we had a lot to give and a lot to learn. It seemed logical for us to split the work according to our expertise, but we were also learning from each other by trying out things outside our expertise. Though we are still in the process of completing our project, it is undeniable that we have learnt many things along the way.