As the Mechatronics Capstone Symposium gets closer and closer, testing continues and more improvements are made.

General Updates

Today (March 17) marks one week until Capstone Symposium. Overall, we are working towards polishing our machine as much as possible, including fully verifying functionality, ironing out any bugs, and cleaning up the machine’s appearance.

For the Symposium on March 24th, we are planning on having a video available to demonstrate all of the machine’s features, and then demonstrate only wire feeding and pressing on the physical machine. To ensure maximum safety, and to not disrupt other groups near us, we have chosen to not do any milling or drilling due to both the high noise levels and the potential for dust.

Mechanical Updates

While testing the press, we noticed a potential area for improvement, and also had to make some repairs.

New Press Die

The wire we are using to produce vias is 0.5 mm in diameter, and so the dies used to press the wire must be at least 0.5 mm large. We initially chose 2 mm steel pins to use as dies, as the smaller size would allow us to press wire closer to the edges of the PCB (where interference with the PCB fixture is a consideration).

During testing, we realized that the wire feeder and cutter poses a larger limitation on where we produce vias, and so we changed the press dies to use 3 mm steel pins. The larger die diameter gives a larger contact surface for the dies, which makes the process more robust to bends in the wire.

The bottom pressing arm with the larger die installed; the top press was similarly updated.

Breaking Parts and Making Parts

While testing the press, user error causes the lower press to collide with the PCB carriage, which in turn caused failure in a faulty mounting bracket for the whole press assembly. This bracket was 3D-printed using poor quality filament, and its replacement has been printed both with higher quality filament and more perimeter material, which is expected to create a higher strength component.

The new press mounting brackets (white components).