Saturday 5 October 2013

Bench Test (No. 2)

This morning I opened up the base again to retrieve a lost nut that accidentally dropped in the other weekend back...

With the circuit board exposed, I happened to notice one of the links touching another component....  I re-positioned the link wire, and guess what....  The link was feeding into the direction control logic for the gripper stepper motor.   Hopefully a slight tweak was all that's needed to fix the problem!


The blueprints included flat washers on the PCB mounts which I added as mine was missing these...


I know... I've had bad experiences following the blueprints to the letter, but in this case, I see no reason why these washers would not help spread the load from the fastenings.   They are M3 flat washers, purchased from a local model shop.


Finally, I could replace the missing bolt on the side plate having retrieved that wild nut...



Connected the hand controller and powered up with my new power supply for bench testing....

A couple of video clips, firstly, the Gripper action now working:


In this clip - you'll see a problem with the Shoulder and Upper arms having tight spots causing a lot of judder.   I can see we're rubbing on the side plates at times, but I need to look at this again with fresh eyes to figure out what to do about it....


So, re-positioning that link certainly solved the problem with the direction control.  I don't really like these circuit boards with unshielded links running everywhere, if you have any problems in this area, I would recommend checking your not touching any neighboring components.

On the whole, I would say we're making good progress.

I'm still missing a few fastenings, so another weekend I intend to pop to a local Nut & Bolt stockist to remedy that situation.


Not a bad pose in these pictures...





2 comments:

  1. wow , you've done a great work. its running smoothly without any problem. what is your next idea for your armdroid?? currently, i'm trying to make the armdroid picking object automatically based on camera sensor!!!!
    the following link is my last update for the armdroid......
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l7nU0HL9MM
    regards...

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  2. I still have plenty to finish with the Restoration Work - shoulder and upper arms suffering with a judder/tightspot mechanical problem which needs resolving. Will be starting work on computer control and will be writing a reusable library called ArmdroidLib which other readers can use to develop applications - plenty to keep me occupied for next weeks...

    I've added a link to your latest video in the resources page - keep up the good work, and keep me posted with your latest developments!

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