Greg Chamberlain
Bio[edit | edit source]
I am a third-year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate student at Michigan Technological University.
Organizations[edit | edit source]
- Open Source Hardware Enterprise
- Sigma Rho Fraternity - Alpha Chapter
Projects[edit | edit source]
This semester (Spring 2015) I worked on the Gigabot and the Induction Furnace.
Gigabot[edit | edit source]
This semester a lot of improvements have been made to the Gigabot to get it to working order. At the beginning of the semester the Gigabot was barely functional, only the x-axis (left/right) was working. The y-axis (front/back), z-axis (up/down) and the extruder head were all not functional. The y-axis was only able to move a few inches before seizing up and stopping. The z-axis could only move within the top ~3 inches before it would lock up on the left side. The problems with the y and z axis was determined to be that the top of the frame is wider than the bottom. To repair this the two center, vertical supports on the left and right sides were spaced from the top, horizontal aluminum bracket with washers. This completely fixed the problems with the z-axis, and some of the problems with the y-axis. The additional y-axis problems were determined to be excessive tension due to the roller bearings being secured to tightly, and scraping between the roller bolts and the center vertical supports. Once these roller bearings were loosened, and the vertical supports were filed down the y axis preformed flawlessly. The final problem of the semester was the extruder head. The original design had issues with the knurled motor attachment not grabbing the filament due to not having enough pressure applied, however when more pressure was applied the torque required by the motor was to great for it to turn and it would stall out. These problems were remedied by using a geared extruder design, with a four bolt to apply pressure to the bearing pressing the filament to the hobbed bolt. At first this design had some issues, mostly with the way it was printed, but fixes were made until the extruded head was properly functioning. On April 24 the printing bed was leveled, final calibrations were made, and the gigabot successfully printed a test part.
Induction Furnace[edit | edit source]
This semester I also worked on the mechanical team of the induction furnace. Since a majority of the calculations and planning were done before this semester began a majority of the work I did on this project was solving problems that arose with how to assemble parts and helping to determine what parts were needed to be bought for things such as the water cooling system. I also made detail drawing of many of the parts including the water block, housing, and crucible platform. I also helped add sections to the Induction furnace report for the water cooling system and other sections in the mechanical part.