Timeline
Having a good design for our robot paint dispenser is instrumental in giving a good first impression to users. We aimed to have a compact and user-friendly design such that people from all walks of life can have an enjoyable experience using our product.
At the beginning of our project, the dispensing of paint was done by using linear actuators to push down syringes. We wanted to 3D print our own holders since we holders which suited our project were not present in the market. Our group went through many rounds of designing as…Read More
Our second idea was to consist of two circular holders (insert picture of 3D printed part), with the linear actuators surrounding the syringes. This was aesthetically more pleasing since the paint dispensed would be of closer proximity to each other, and mixing would be slightly easier. We proposed this design…Read More
The final idea was to ditch using linear actuators, and instead switch to using peristaltic pumps which are made to deliver liquid. Since the pumps are smaller, our final set-up would be more compact.
Our group split ourselves into two groups: the coding geniuses were going to figure out how to code the peristaltic pump to deliver precise volumes of liquids, as well as the user interface (UI). The others oversaw the wiring of both the UI and the five stepper motors (through the…Read More
In the beginning, the user was only able to select RGB (red, green, blue) through a slider since it was the colour scheme that was the most widely used. During the sharing session, we were asked “Why RGB only?” and that prompted us to give the user more options. …Read More
Dr Tony introduced us to the Marlin firmware, the firmware created by many computing scientists for the utility of the 3D printer. In Ramps 1.4, the five motors were controlled by x, y, z, E0 and E1 (with E representing the extruder). The extruders and the x,y, and z were…Read More
This segment was much more difficult than what we initially anticipated. First off, we wanted to light up the screen. Figuring out which wires had to be connected to which pin the Arduino was painful as we did not know where to get our information from initially. It was only after…Read More
Next, we had to ensure that our UI could display the coloured sliders. We found heaps of code online (turns out: RGB sliders are more popular than we expected) and ran many codes through the TFT screen (driver: ILI9488) that we purchased prior. However, for two full days, we could…Read More
At this stage, we were extremely specific with the screens desired. We were fortunate that Sim Lim Tower sold the Adafruit touch shield with capacitive touch – the exact screen that worked for our code – and we were finally able to display something other than the white screen, which…Read More