KUWTP Ep. 22 | 20th August 2024 | 3D Printing + Coding + Assembling our second weighing scale
Working hard or hardly working. A very fruitful day in the lab where we finally managed to coordinate our timetables and squeeze out some time in the afternoon to head down to the lab. We hogged made use of 5 3D printers before heading for lunch, 3D printing our 3 parts belonging to the pet food dispenser, and 2 parts belonging to the weighing scale. For our previous weighing scale, it was a simpler mechanism where the load cell only requires a holder to attach it to a board, and by placing pressure on the load cell, it would create a strain and produce a reading. However with our new load cell, which is of a different mechanism, we require a special set-up to purposefully create a strain at the centre of the load cell, as per our last post. A slight boo boo we made was we forgot to double check the dimensions of our print and hence accidentally printed the dimensions meant for a 20kg load cell, not our 5kg load cell. To our relief, the base of the weighing scale still fits the load cell. However, the top plate would need some editing to perfect the dimensions. While tinkering with the top plate, we also decided to maybe incorporate a bowl into the top plate. With that being said, the filament used in lab although it is PLA and supposedly food safe given its biodegradability and non-toxic composition, we have some hesitations in using it to contain food directly as it may not be good for the dog to eat out of this bowl, hence we would require a covering over this bowl that is certified food safe.
After an hour or so, we checked back on our prints after lunch and were delighted to see some prints were completed! However, we did have to re-print one of the components of the pet food dispenser as it did not stick to the base of the 3D printer and became a disaster. We managed to assemble the weighing scale and to our delight it works well with no calibration issues. The coding for this weighing scale will differ from the previous weighing scale in a sense where we are thinking of having it read the mass continuously instead of only when prompted.
As for the update to our ESP8266-01S wifi module, we have yet to troubleshoot this problem HAHAHAHA. If all fails, we are considering buying an Arduino Uno R4 with in-built Wifi!
