Mechanical Design

Overview:

Because of availability and relative ease of use, our group decided to use laser cutters for manufacturing our overall structure. Only 1/4" and 1/8" duron was used for this project.

Design Decisions:

1. Tolerancing was deemed negligible because the laser cutter removed enough material that intersections were simple. It also left enough of a channel for glue to be used.
2. Since the duron was very lightweight, assembly was done using hot glue and duct tape as reinforcement on the interior seams.
3. For the core pieces (ie all pieces except the sides), 1/4" duron was used to provide more strength against impact from user interactions. For the sides, 1/8" was used since it was primarily used as support structure.
4. All design work was done in SolidWorks for ease of interfacing with teammates. (Also free through Stanford).
5. At the last minute, we decided on removing one servo, since it presented a structural difficulty in integration. This required a simplification of one of our original functions of a resetting lever, but we decided to use a toggle approach to reduce mechanical complexity. If we had more time, we might have been able to integrate the pulley resetting mechanism, but due to time constraints, we opted for a simpler mechanism that didn't require resetting. Fortunately, this didn't affect the user experience at all as everybody mentioned that they wouldn't have known unless told.

Design Files: