When: 5 July 2019, 9.45am
Members present: Alexis, Claudia, Vanessa (Have fun at Seniors’ Camp Carissa!!)
Let’s recap what we need to do today:
- 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.
Problem 4 | Reduce y-axis rotation of the LA-Tubing Connector
We used some spare brackets and short aluminium profiles to create a protruding L-shaped structure that just grazed the vertical LA-tubing connector. It helped to stop its rotation when the LA piston moved up and down due to the extra vertical surface.
Makeshift aluminium profile to stop the connector rotation.
We were at first worried about the friction, but it was fine. We just had to be careful with the vertical position of the profile, because the actual concern was the top/bottom of the connector catching onto the inner ‘hooked’ profile ledge. When we tried to get the LA working, it started to jam horribly. We had to slowly increase the flow speed up from 200 to 300, 400, 500, 600, … It would jam when we tried to hit 700. We added synthetic lube and kept trying, eventually it managed to work.
Problem 1 | Get an even styrofoam base
We removed the styrofoam from the embroidery base, and stuffed it properly to make sure it was level. The styrofoam we used was recycled from the packaging that came with our 3D Printer back in end May.
However, when we tried to test the machine, the yarn refused to adhere to the felt at all. :/ This was weird because it worked totally fine yesterday when we tried it out. We didn’t make any changes to the settings. We changed the styrofoam base to a different one, which was more even, albeit smaller (white cuboid styrofoam). We also tried changing the wool yarn from the dark grey yarn to the brown yarn…
And it worked much better! Still, we decided to go for a styrofoam base that would be completely level, and as such, Claudia and Vanessa decided to go to Clementi’s Art Friend to find a more permanent styrofoam base we can use!
Here are the items we bought at Art Friend! (Total spending: $12.41)
| Styrofoam |
|
| Felt |
|
| Mounting Tools |
|
Notice how we decided to try two different thickness of felt for our bedding! We wanted to see if the thicker (and hence, denser) felt of 430 g would result in better sticking of our yarn to our bedding as compared to the usual thickness of felt we were using, which was 180 g. It turned out that the yarn did not stick as well to the thicker felt. This could be because the thicker felt would mean that wool is more densely packed, and thus resulting in less tangling of the wool when our needle jabs down.
Thus, we switched back to the felt we were using originally. We decided to buy new felt as we felt that the previous one we were using was already worn from all our test runs! Putting it all together, here’s how our new base looks like! 
Our new base is rectangular and baby pink!!
Problem 2 & 3 | Yarn Feeder Mk VII
We made the necessary changes and printed it out. It looks almost the same as the previous one though.
Yarn Feeder Mk VII.
Functionally, it worked the same. When we did a test run, the results were still sub-optimal, so we decided to modify the design further to resemble an extruder head.
Yarn Feeder Mk VIII.
While we were at it, we also changed the size of the opening in hopes that the capturing of the yarn will improved given that the needle now has less space to stray within the opening. Initially, the size of the opening was 3 mm. We changed the size of the opening THREE times– 2.5 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm.
The 2.5 mm yarn feeder worked slightly better, but the yarn was still not being captured at the edges!
Test print using the Yarn Feeder Mk VII (2.5mm): A Square? Or is it a Circle? The printer tries its best…
From left to right, Yarn Feeder Mk VII (2.5mm), VIII (1.5mm), and IX (2mm). Notice the difference in the opening sizes.
The 1.5 mm opening turned out to be too small for us to thread the yarn through due to the resolution and inaccurate calibration of the printer, as such, we had to reprint the yarn feeder with an opening of 2 mm to test!
And… we have yet to test the yarn feeder with a 2 mm opening, so we’ll update more on this later, or on Monday.
Yarn Considerations
While we were at it, Tony also suggested that we use a thinner type of yarn. As such, we switched the black and thicker yarn to that of the thinner yarn we had and the yarn was able to stick better! We suspect that because the thinner yarn was slightly more dense than the thicker yarn, more fiber could be captured by the needle during the jabbing for more tangling of the fiber! Thus, the brown and thinner yarn sticks better to the felt as compared to the black but thicker yarn.
Main Body (Back) Mk V
We designed it such that there are some new changes:
- Changed the screw bore position and size for the attachment area to the 3D printer
- Changed the counterbores for attachment area to the yarn feeder
Main Body (back) Mk V. The counterbores for the attachment to the yarn feeder are just screw bores. The ‘ear’ seen in the above image (on the left face) is not in the right position.
However, when it printed out, both of these didn’t work out. We made a few more adjustments, but would have to wait til Monday to check out Main Body Mk VI!
Putting Everything Together…
At least it prints a line decently!!!
That’s it for today!! We’re still waiting for our new yarn feeder and home to print, so be sure to catch our update next week to see if everything works!
PS. Dr. Ho said we have an excellent blog, so we’re literally all smiles now! 
Since the man himself said it… be sure to check out this amazing blog more often!