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10. Open Source Hardware - From Fibers to Fabric

Week 10 _ engineering

describe what you see in this image

The creation of new tools and machines requires extensive knowledge in the field. But of course there is also time for achievements, experiments, changes, improvements, etc. It's a complicated week, but...

My experience

Unfortunately, I have no experience in this field. And being the node in the first year, we decided to build the Hilo’s spinning machine 2.0.

We thought that it was a good assignment for the team. We decided to divide the work into roles in order to have a good result in the end.

Here are the roles distributed between our team:

  • Elena Bannaia - gathering of the materials, laser cutting;

  • Elena Rotaru - photo video documenting;

  • Elena Florea - improvement of the pattern in rhino, parametric change;

  • Valentina Frunze - circuit connection;

  • Aliona Raru - preparing of the fibers to spin;

  • All - assembling together.

Materials

Initially, I analyzed a video in which I understood how this machine works.

The spinning machine consists of metal elements, wooden elements and electric circuit. Elena Bannaia managed to gather all the materials to start the work. This is the list of required components:

Design

The existing pattern of the turning machine is in need of modifications that would allow the assembly of the machine.

This task belonged to me. Therefore, after careful consideration, we decided to change the inner radii of the disc holes. Their size depends on the metal tubes purchased. I also changed the size of the assembly mode of the elements. All changes were made on the AutoCAD software.

This is the pattern with changes.

With the document saved in dxf format, I went to the FabLab for laser cutting. With the help of the local instructor and Elena Bannaia, I cut the necessary elements. The laser parameters were as follows.

This is the result after laser cutting

Assembly

The stage of assembling the details was an interesting but complicated one. Each element was glued for rigidity and attached with special tools until the glue dries. Initially, the base of the spinning machine was glued.

Then the rotating part of the machine was glued.

Then the rotating element was inserted into the base of the turning machine.

An important part of making the spinning machine is creating the electrical circuit. On this side Valentina Frunze answered. And everything turned out very well. I started by drawing the circuit and assembling the circuit elements.

One and after making it was placed on the base of the turning machine.

After assembling all the elements, I checked the working mode of the turning machine.

Preparing of the fibers to spin

This interesting stage was distributed to Aliona Raru.For this step we took wool and started to brush it. After that we created the thread that can be put thru the machine. Below is the spinning process

The whole process was documented (photo and video) by Elena Rotaru.

Conclusions

After making this spinning machine, I could identify some problems that could be improved:

  1. Car design - I propose to create individual elements and shapes to emphasize the uniqueness of this car;

  2. Placing the engine - I propose creating a hole in the base of the machine and placing it inside;

  3. Metal circlips - I propose to change the metal circlips with a moving element that would allow the thread to rotate along the metal tube.

Fabrication files

  1. File: Spinning machine PDF¶ ↩

  2. File: Spinning machine DXF¶ ↩

Last update: 2023-04-10