When: 27 June 2019, 10am
Members Present: All
Morning Testing!
LA-Tubing Connector Mk I
It only finished printing late last evening, so we’re finally getting to testing it now! Unfortunately, the moment we fit on just one half, we knew it wasn’t going to work. ☹ The piece is meant to rest on the ‘ledge’ of the piston head, but it fell short. We made some quick edits and sent it off for reprinting.
LA-Tubing Connector Mk I. Notice the vertical spacing between the lowest point of the Connector and the ‘ledge’ of the piston head.
Main Body Mk III
The two body pieces were finally done! We removed the old prototypes from the 3D printer, and attached on the new ones.
Main Body Mk III, back piece. The main difference made is the removal of the grooves in the cavity.
Main Body Mk III, front piece. The main differences made are the removal of the grooves in the cavity, and the added ‘umbrella’ to hold the external tubing (in the adaptor piece) in place.
Putting everything together, it was a perfect fit. Unlike Mk II where the top left screw faced difficulties screwing all the way in, now everything is in place. Moving the other end of the internal tubing manually, we indeed saw the needle poking through the bottom of the feeder. It even feels smoother than before since the Needle-Tubing Connector has been streamlined.
Main Body Mk III fully mounted!
Minor Brackets Mk II
Remember the two designs for the small brackets we sent for printing yesterday? We fixed them onto our aluminium frame. However, we had to change the positions of some of the frames, and subsequently the brackets too, so that the shorter 3-faced piece would be able to fit (We almost reprinted it with some adjustments!).
Vanessa and Claudia hard at work moving some of our parts around the accommodate the minor brackets.
Minor Brackets Mk II, secured in place onto our aluminium profiles.
Now our aluminium frame is more steady than before!
LA-Tubing Connector Mk II
After some measurements here and there, we managed to re-print our LA such that the bigger hole at the bottom was nicely aligned with the hole on the LA module.
(Almost) Complete Prototype Testing #1
Next, we finally attached our internal tube to our LA-Tubing connector and mounted our connector to the LA. We mounted in everything and tested out with the power supply! HOORAY!! It worked well!! However, it only worked well for about 10 seconds before it started to jam. 🙁 We figured out that the reason for the jamming was due to the loose fitting of the LA connector as well as the off-alignment of the major bracket (MKIII) with the centre of the LA module. Hence, we decided to re-measure and obtained the dimensions needed for our LA Tubing Connector to fit perfectly on our LA module and the dimensions for our major bracket (MKIII) to be directly above the LA module. We hope that this will minimize the jamming of the LA when connected to the power supply.
Post-Lunch Crafting…
LA-Tubing Connector Mk III
We decided to reduce the size of the internal cavity for the LA module and TADA!
Dimensions of our modified LA Tubing Connector.
Major Brackets Mk IV
We shifted the hole where our quick fitting (with tube) is supposed to clamp a bit towards the left as well as extended out the top part of the bracket to align the hole directly above the centre of our LA module. TADA! Hopefully, it really is aligned (fingers crossed!!!).
Dimensions of our modified Major Brackets.
Yarn Feeder Considerations…?
To lead the yarn to the feeder, we were considering using tubing to prevent entanglement. However, we realised we should have printed the yarn guiding tube to the right instead of the left because currently there is currently the LA-needle tubing leading to the left of the 3D printer. In addition, we also decided to duct tape our external tube with our yarn threaded through it to our MK Body. Hence, after shifting our spool (now loaded with our yarn) and duct taping our external tube with yarn, we managed to obtain an arrangement that allows us to minimise entanglement.
Modified Arrangements of our Yarn Feeder.