When: 10 June 2019, 12.30pm
Members present: All
The embroidery hoop base has been printed successfully! We cut out some recycled styrofoam to fill out the foam base for the needle to stab into, and fastened the base to our 3D printer. It fit perfectly. Now we have a solid base!
Embroidery Hoop Mk II, from different angles.
Embroidery Hoop Mk II, with cloth secured in place and mounted onto the 3D printer.
As for our coupler, it turns out it isn’t the right fit, so we began to re-model a new one in Fusion 360. This… took a while. In the meantime, we tested out the coupler by sending in commands from our computer, and it was able to rotate clockwise/anticlockwise.
We also began to start planning for the needle/thread mechanism, and how it would be attached to the 3D printer. We studied the Disney paper mechanism, as well as other sewing machines’ existing machinery. We needed to have a Y-shaped ‘funnel’, consisting of two guiding cylinders: one for the needle, and the other for the wool yarn. The idea is that the wool yarn would be consistently fed right below the needle, and the needle would stab downwards on top of the wool yarn to secure it to the felt. For it to be extra secure, we needed the needle to stab downwards multiple times. In other words, the needle should have slow speed for the x/y movement (easily adjustable), but the needle should be able to move up and down rapidly.
We printed out our needle/thread feeder design, and it worked out really well!
Yarn & Needle Feeder Mk I.
How the Yarn & Needle Feeder Mk I works.
The next few days will be pretty busy for our group, with lots of camps on. So we decided to work on the update meeting on our own until the next time we meet up. Anyway it’s pretty difficult for us to progress without the rest of our ordered parts (Motors, drill, etc).