axCut + Man Cave
It's been a long summer, but the man cave is now virtually complete and last weekend, the laser cutter (axCut) got moved into its long-term home:
AFRo
Whilst I've spent most of the sun-lit hours building, the dark hours have recently been spent on a new project - building an assistive feeding robot (named AFRo) for the UK charity REMAP. The goal is not dissimilar to the HelloSpoon project (see Indiegogo campaign), but with enough differences to require a new solution.
You can are welcome to read through my detailed Design Notes as the design progresses, but for instant gratification, here is the latest video:
The hardware/software are both open source and published on github - see links in the Design Notes document, or search for the AFRo repo. Hardware is fully modelled in OpenSCAD and predominantly 3D printable. Total parts cost is currently around £260.
Comments/ideas welcome, but please read the Design Notes first in case they're already answered.
AFRo mk2
Although the mk1 mechanical design is functional and meets the design parameters, it suffers from too much vibration at the spoon tip :( No good having a robot that shakes your food off the spoon. It's not serious enough to abandon mk1, but it does mean I'm already working on mk2 in parallel. It'll re-use most of the software, as the axis configuration is logically unchanged. Here's the design sketch:
Will put up a more detailed post reviewing the design changes/reasons when I have time.
