3D printer

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Animabot Rev3 – Mecha – Lower Body Assembly

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 07/08/2019
Posted in: Animabot Rev3, Mecha. Tagged: , , , , , , . 6 Comments

After so many weeks of waiting, all Animabot’s parts are finally home !!!

I decided to start with the lower body assembly and then working the way up to the head. The legs will be the last parts to be mounted because I need to redo the PCB and the PCB should be mounted before the legs 😀 this, and also because I didn’t find the courage yet to disassemble the current version yet :/

 

The first I did was to check if the motherboard and the servos were properly fitting inside and yes they do! So from this, I started by mounting the screws inserts in place ( by using a soldering iron, then pressing gently them in the hole). Once this step done, I continued with the buttons on the rear panel which are inserted and glued (easy peasy) and placed the dust grid behind the air vents. To install them, I also used the soldering iron and kind of “soldered” to the inner side of the body (melted both together), the result is not particularly aesthetic but it’s easy and durable !

Rear Panel Connections
Rear panel connections
IR Telemeter
Motherboard placement check

Below the battery, is mounted the dock connector constituted of 2 concentric copper rings (no polarity inversion possible !) and also the dock sensor which is basically a simple magnetic switch (Reed switch). All this is isolated from the battery with some Kapton tape. Last but not least, the IR Telemeter is now fiercely mounted on the front. The switch on the very bottom is the battery kill switch which allows me to completely disconnect the battery from the system  ….  just in case…   😀

Rear Panel Test
Dock Connector and Reed switch
Rear Panel
Robot’s belly
IR Telemeter

Next Step will be the upper body 😉

Animabot Rev3 – Mecha – Parts are on the way !

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 30/07/2019
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Good news ! The body parts are done and on the way ! I’m really exited to see how Animabot will come along once assembled. For the moment, I’m still writing and testing the drivers of the Motherboard and testing all components…. So hopefully, within few weeks I will finish this, send a new motherboard to production and integrate it.

Now, let’s enjoy the beauty of SLA 3D printing with smooth finish :

Big Puzzle
Upper Body
Lower & Upper Body Interior
Some internal parts
Lower Body

He is gonna be AWESOME !!!!

Animabot Rev3 – Mecha – Leg Sample

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 15/07/2019
Posted in: Animabot Rev3, Mecha. Tagged: , , , . 9 Comments

The mechanical design is finished since few weeks, but I have been waiting some sample of the leg to check the tolerances, quality and color. This sample allowed to check the passage of the cable in the Coxa, the Tibia Cap (anti-slippery pad), servo mounting, etc..

I’m glad I ask I did that before the complete manufacturing because I found several issues. The passage for the cable needed to be deeper to protect it, the Pad was too small to hold in place properly and the color did not satisfied me totally… I’m still waiting for some more sample to compare and chose the final color !

 

Hopefully the samples will arrive soon, so I can order all the parts to assemble Animabot !

Animabot Rev2 – Final Assembly !

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 04/11/2015
Posted in: Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , , , , . 2 Comments

It’s been a while since the last post… mostly because my new job is taking away most of my time…

But also because I had to fix several issues in Anima before mounting the legs and the upper body. First I had to fix the sound problem, curiously the IR sensor was generating noise which was propagated up to the audio amplifier, thus generating audible noise… To fix it I added to capacitors (100nF & 10µF) on the sensor’s power connection. Then I burned the Li-ion charger 😦 so I had to replace some mosfet and add some heatsinks.

Finally after 20 months of design, tests, doubts, bug fix, etc… Animabot is assembled and ready to walk !!!

 

Stay tuned 😉

Animabot Rev2 – Body Assembly (part 3)

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 03/09/2015
Posted in: Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 Comments

Hello ! The assembly of Animabot is going well, I have almost finished 🙂 I’m mostly making cables and cables… Thinking about how I’m gonna put all of them into the body… But anyway, I’m also testing the electronic and everything is also fine up to now: Audio amp and speakers, IR telemeter, fan, Night LED, temperature sensor and power monitor and the ATX Raspi are working !!!

The Rapsi is also much thinner without all these big connectors 🙂 but I have some issues with  the WIFI dongle and I need to test the webcam.

So I put all the parts together to see if all goes well, and for now it’s look like this :

Power ON baby !

I like it ! even if the parts are not perfect as I would like, and even if the design is full of errors, it doesn’t look so bad 🙂

More update soon 😉

Animabot Rev2 – Leg prototype

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 05/06/2015
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Hello ! Good news, the first leg prototype is now assembled 😀 I have printed a tibia and a coxa in order to see if the parts can be well-printed before going to mass production. I had to modify a bit the coxa to pass the cable inside (now it should be ok) and also the tibia (only the design for a better look). I still have some tests to run but I think the parts are ready to be printed 😉

Leg Tibia Prototype
Leg Tibia Prototype
Tibia Prototype
Tibia Prototype
Coxa Prototype
All femur parts

 

Stay tuned !

Animabot Rev2 – Femur print

Posted by Emmanuel Sichet on 27/05/2015
Posted in: 3D Printer, Animabot Rev2. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Hello !  Another update about the print process. I have successfully printed the femur parts and I will soon begin the assembly 🙂 I finally have good settings for the print supports, so hopefully everything should go well now 😉

Femur parts
Femur inside view
Femur assembled

The femur is composed of 3 parts: The front and back covers are screwed to the servos and the middle shell is maintained with 4 metal rods.

 

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 😉