Meetup 2018-05-10

Interesting evening, and we’ll do it again this Thursday.

Earlier in the week, I managed to redesign the pendulum ball holders to snugly fit the magnets in place, as well as being a bit more springy an nicer-looking. My mission for the evening was to print out a few examples and tweak until happy. I did get a few prints, but the bottom layers are squished and misaligned, leading to a misshapen print that did not fit that great. I think I’m overextruding.

I also tried a newer version of Cura, but that resulted in skipped steps which messed up the last print I did.

Otto brought a very interesting project he’s doing for a friend: An ESP32 with OLED screen and RFID reader integrated into a handheld tool, with a Mutitoyo indicator attached. The idea is that this is used to make measurements easier. The user would position the indicator at a specific point and then scan an RFID tag near the point to capture the reading. The tag also stores the allowable range of readings to indicate a pass or fail. The ESP32 also serves as a web server to automatically transfer the readings to a central database. This eliminated manual entry errors and makes the whole process faster.

We discussed placing of a possible RFID sensor for home entry. Putting it into the mains power meter box seems a bit risky and uninsurable. However, the front gate has an extra access plate which is accessible and probably has 12V power already, so it should be pretty easy to wire in there.

Tom and Steph worked some more on the Alphabot. Not sure what they managed to figure out.

Ruan brought a disassembled smoothie maker. He is hoping to use the motor to make a wood lathe. We figured out how it’s controlled and came to the conclusion that the motor was probably too fast and had too little torque for a direct drive.

He then worked on the square tube layout for the lathe.

All in all, a nice evening.