Animabot Rev2 – Leg print

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 10/05/2015
Posted in: 3D Printer, Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , , . 2 Comments

Hi all, quick update about the printing process. For now all is good, I have great result with my silver filament and my setting on Simplify3D. I have a bit modified the femur design and split it in 3 parts instead of 2. Thanks to this, I have much better results of the motor’s supports.

So, in the next few weeks I will print all the femur parts, then the tibia. A lot of hours of printing in perspective 🙂 because each femur parts takes 2h to print (6legs x 3parts x 2h = 36h) and 2h for each tibia part (24h in total) !!!

Femur parts
Leg assembly test
Leg assembly test
Leg assembly test
Leg assembly test

Stay tuned !

Animabot Rev2 – Welcome to the printing world

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 21/04/2015
Posted in: 3D Printer, Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Hi !

So, I have been doing some prints during the weekend… and it’s not as easy as expected 😕 First of all, the PVA filament. It requires a lot of tests and tuning in order to print it correctly, up to now the PVA is still giving me hard work so I’m unfortunately not using it for the supports… so for the moment I print them in PLA.

The other thing is the print quality. As I want Animabot to look as close as possible to the rendering, I need very clean parts and if possible without visible layers. To get to this, I will have to sand the parts with a tumbler, apply a filler, then sand again and finally paint ! lot of work in perspective, but this is the price for a good-looking 😀

I have been able to print the gears and the board support without any issues because they have simple shape:

Head gears
Gear mounted on servo’s head
Boards support

The femur is the next part to print, I had to increase a bit the width of the walls to get it more rigid. The femur is printed with a 0,1mm layer resolution and result is very good even if it needs to be a little sanded or polished. There is a gap between both parts, it’s because the motor’s supports are a bit higher due to the printed supports… not all residues have been removed 😦  as you can also see, cables just fit tight inside ! no more space 😉

Femur print prototype
Femur print prototype
Femur print prototype
Femur print prototype
Femur print prototype

In Bonus, here are the print fails ^^

Second layer printed without support
Front face of the femur right after print
Front face cleaned
Head after print with PVA supports
Head front after print with PVA supports
Head cleaned from the supports
Head front cleaned from the supports

If anyone know how to get the supports printed in PVA correctly, it would be great ! any tips or ideas are welcomed !

Animabot Rev2 – First Print !

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 30/03/2015
Posted in: 3D Printer, Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

Hello ! Animabot is finally getting printed \o/

After months of waiting, the first part has been printed 🙂 I started easy to get my hands on the FlashForge, then I will go more and more complex 😉 Actually, I’m printing a universale spool holder, because the Flashforge spools are “proprietary” and I need to use other filament brand.

Head Gear 2

As you can see, I printed one gear of Animabot’s head for testing purposes. Now I know the configuration for PLA, I can continue to print the rest of the part 😉 I’m really getting excited knowing that Animabot will finally “come to life” !

More to come in the next weeks, stay tuned 😉

Animabot Rev2 – Slicing parts

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 19/03/2015
Posted in: 3D Printer, Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Hello,

As you know Animabot was in standby for the last few weeks, mainly because my 3D printer was not delivered… this has come to an end ! I decided to cancel the Craftbot order and buy another one ! I should receive the FlashForge Dreamer 3D printer next week, if all goes well 😉

FlashForge Features
FlashForge Dreamer

In the mean time, I began slicing the parts to prepare the prints and be ready for D-day 🙂 The dreamer use the Flash Print software with the slic3r engine for G-Code generation. Flash Print is very easy to use and provides many setting options. Oh  ! and the best is the printer has 2 heads ! this means I can print parts in PLA or ABS and the supports in PVA (water-soluble filament).

Head – sliced
Head Gears – sliced
Body Front part – stl file
Body Front part – sliced

I also had to adapt a little bit the body and cut it in 3 parts because the build volume of the printer is too small for the whole body… That’s why you see one of the parts of the body on the images above. Anyway, I’m looking forward to finally receive my printer and finally begin to fabricate and assemble Animabot !

Stay tuned 😉

Animabot Rev2 – Boards programming

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 05/02/2015
Posted in: Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , , . 9 Comments

Hey, It’s been a long time since I posted news on Animabot 😉 I didn’t advanced much on the software but I can now talk to the servos which is a very good news 🙂 I still have to make all the functions to control them correctly (setPosition, getPosition, moveAll, setTorque, getTemp, etc.) but it will be more interesting !

I’m still waiting for my 3D printer… and it begins to annoy me…

Servos are alive !
Servos are alive !
STM32F4 under programming

Animabot Rev2 – Boards programming

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 26/11/2014
Posted in: Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Hi,

A small update about the boards, as you can see on the photo below, the boards are connected together and the power is well-distributed in each of them.

I have also set up my software environment using Eclipse and ChibiOS RTOS. I can now working on the STM32 configuration and mid-level implementation for ADC, SPI, LTC2945, Sensors (Temp, IR, accelerometer) etc… The Serial Driver is already working so I can at least use printf for debugging 🙂

As I’m still waiting for my 3D printer, So I concentrate of the software and I will continue the mechanic later.

Boards

Animabot Rev 2 – Final Design

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 04/11/2014
Posted in: Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Hey !

I finally finished the design of Animabot !

Front view
Rear View
Front side view
Rear side view
Cut view body
Cut view body 2

The next step is to prepare the parts for printing, then I will continue the boards tests and prepare all the cables which are inside the beast 😉

Anyway, a big step has been made !

┏(-_-)┛ ┗(-_- )┓ ┗(-_-)┛ ┏(-_-)┓

Animabot Rev2 – Electronic Boards Assembly

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 30/10/2014
Posted in: Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Hi,

I finally received my boards \o/ I spent my week soldering them and here is the result:

STM32 adapter
Power Board
Li-Ion charger

I prefer this new version to the old one, the top silk is also better. I didn’t performed all the tests yet, but at least the “smoke test” passed !
The next step is to interconnect them and see if everything is alright. Once I will be able to control one servomotor, a big step will have been made.
The next week I think I will have finally finished the 3D design; I will post the finals renderings.

Keep in touch 😉

Animabot Rev2 – Head Design

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 16/10/2014
Posted in: Animabot Rev2, SolidWorks. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Hi guys,

It has been a long time since the last post… I have been pretty busy with my job but I have not forgotten Animabot 😉
Few weeks ago I received my boards but there were some mistakes I had to correct… some of the tracks were in contact with the ground plane due to bugs in the Gerber generation…
And I also discovered some issues in the design, so I decided to redo the boards ! I should receive them next week 🙂

In the meantime I worked on the head, I have now an encouraging first version, but I’m not convinced of the “webcam hood” so I will do a second “smother” version 😉
But, in any way I figured out how to integrate the servo for the head rotation, and it seems to works pretty well…

Here is the actual state of Animabot :

Head front view
Head right side view
Head left side view
Internal head gear system
Cut view

I still have work to do : fix everything inside the head, divide the head in 2 parts for the print/assembly, etc…

He doesn’t look so bad… what do you think ?