When: 4 July, 11am
Members present: Alexis, Claudia,Β Vanessa (Have fun at Seniors’ Camp, Carissa!!)
Yarn Feeder Mk VI (Print 2!)
It printed out fine, without clogging in the guiding tubes since we printed without supports this time. It looks exactly the same as the print from yesterday so I shall reuse the image π
Yarn Feeder Mk VI.
Main Body Mk III (Back Piece)
… Failed print, and not just because it was ‘curling’ last night (Thanks Karn for letting us know!). The vertical spacing given for the Yarn Feeder to attach to was not enough. It would not be able to fit with the quick fitting adaptor piece. However, everything else was pretty much all right.
Main Body Mk III (Back piece). If you place it on a flat surface such as the table, you can gently ‘press down’ and get it to rock around, due to it ‘curling’.
Main Body Mk IV (Back Piece)
Vanessa sketched up the changes to be made pretty quickly, and Claudia made the necessary edits to the Fusion360 model. Then we sent it for printing! However, since it’s a pretty large piece, it would probably take a while for it to print, about 4-5 hours.
Vanessa’s sketch of Main Body Mk IV (Back), with the necessary changes made in blue.
30% printing progress of our Main Body Mk IV (back)! It’s cheese-coloured ~
After lazing around for a few hours, it’s finally out! We took to cleaning the piece, which took some effort as it was printed with a lot of supports. We dismantled the current Sewing Module that’s mounted to replace it with the new one.
Main Body Mk IV (back piece) looks like a block of cheese. Notice the new attachment style for the yarn feeder to the main body.
MVP Test Run #3!
Tony helped us to fix our stepper motor. At first the connections were pretty loose, and the LA jammed pretty badly. We dismantled it and Tony made some adjustments to it. Following this, we could finally test our new Yarn Feeder Mk VI and Main Body Mk III!
The moment of truth! The Sewing Module lowered itself onto the platform, and began felting away.
It worked out much better than any of our previous runs! Before this, we tried threading the yarn through the small hole at the base of the yarn feeder, but doing so forced the yarn up away from the felt. It didn’t let any of the yarn stick to the felt at all. Other than that, it was a much better tun than our previous attempts, as far as straight lines go. The yarn was pretty well felted onto the felt.
A sped-up video of felting a curved corner. It didn’t make quite a clean corner, but it’s almost there.
The problem came in when the corners came next. It seemed that the thread was being dragged along, preventing the yarn forming the curved corners to be well adhered to the felt.
A three part story π Corners don’t seem to be well-liked by our MVP.
The first felted square seemed to do fine, but subsequently, it seemed like there were problems adhering well when felting very close to / directly onto the felted yarn. It did not get felted well, and the corners came loose.
… Either that, or the issue lies in the lack of even elevation of the styrofoam base in our embroidery hoop. The area where the corners were felted well (3rd image above) were slightly more elevated compared to the areas that were not well-felted (2nd image). After further studying how the felting was going, we made a list of improvements that we can work on when we meet again in the Lab tomorrow:
- Get an even styrofoam base surface.
- Further reduce the yarn feeder base area (Direct interface to the felt; friction might be dragging thread along).
- Reduce the size of the opening of the yarn feeder for the yarn and needle to poke through.
- Reduce y-axis rotation of LA-tubing connector while LA is powered on.
- Neaten up the wires which may cause the machine to jam.
But that’s work for tomorrow! We’re taking steps to greatly improve our MVP and it’s going great so far; from a line, to a… squiggly square is a start.
Thanks Tony for the help!