Mechanics |¶
Ideation & sketches¶
Mechaloom Project as I mentioned was built after the pandemic. During the pandemic, two concepts based on electromagnetism were tested. Of which one turned out to be attractive due to its instantaneous and very low electrical consumption.
With this project we found out That a board with an H-bridge was necessary for each thread to miniaturize the design, and that mechanical design was going to be an issue if we wanted the loom to be consistent.
As you can see, the Mechaloom is a Frankenstein. A cross between the Dorothy loom by LeClerc and a construction of MDF, metal, and acrylic.
The idea with this iteration was to prove several concepts and find out where all the little devils would hide.
Because the devil hides in the details¶
Body Re-Design¶
I decided to start by designing the loom frame in Solidworks, as the electronic cards were yet to arrive, which would determine the shape and size of the central body.
I decided to make the frame from an 18-millimeter plywood piece, so it could be easily replicable in any Fab Lab.
I chose a thickness of 18 millimeters because I also decided that the body of the loom should be part of the frame structure, so we wouldn't rely solely on joints that could loosen, thus giving much more rigidity to the entire loom.
After designing I alrady routed the frame to start working in the body.
The first atempt was a disaster. After cutting the entire frame, in the last g code disaster stroke. Aparently something with the machine voltage happened and the machine zero moved an inch to the left and the entire work was spoiled.
Next I had to buy a new board and routed piece by piece. The final assembly of the frame turned out very nice. I am very pleased with the design.
I have to say that literal, I am leaving my blood on this project.
The total amount of material I used in the frame was about 1/3 of the plywood board, that means that the cost of the frame is about 11.50 Euros.
To turn the crancks of Loom One there are needed some handles as you can see in the MechaLoom. I designed the handles to host the screw that turn the final fabric.
As part of the actuators that select the threads, two electromagnets with a diameter of 2mm are required.
A winding machine was developed for the FabLoom 2.0 project in 2019. I had to redo this same machine with the help of my colleague Carlos Pérez to be able to manufacture the Loom One coils.
There are still some improvements to be made, but we can make the prototype with the product that is manufactured with this machine.
Electromagnets ready to be installed in the new actuator board
Finally, for this mid-term presentation, it should be noted that the design of the new cards requires a complete redesign of the loom body because the need to place 16-pin connectors has caused each card to be extended by two centimeters, which completely changes the design of the component compared to the actuator card.
Similarly, several designs of the meshes that separate the threads were made; the final design of these will depend on the final configuration.
