After recently coming into possession of a laser cutter, I thought id make a system for prototyping intakes to test it out.
I wanted to be able to easily change between bumper heights. Currently its only a matter of swapping the single 3D printed standoff block to change the height of the bumper, no need to mess with bolt lengths or multiple spacers. The Onshape document is setup to generate these spacers for arbitrary bumper heights between 1/4" off the floor up to the current max of 2.5".
The main focus for this system is these sliding rollers. I didnt want to have to mess with belts or motors so the method of power is standard hand drills with 1/2" hex sockets. The standoffs are far enough away to accommodate 4" diameter wheels. The slots on the roller arms allow you to positions the rollers to any arbitrary position and tighten the bolts to lock in the position well enough to test it out. In real life I would probably put big washers on the bolt and nut to prevent crushing the wood under any high clamping force. I decided not to have a 3rd mainly to not over complicate it since there is diminishing returns in usefulness of a test platform past that, adding a 3rd arm would probably work just fine though. The main intention would be to find roller positions that work enough to be transferred to a wooden fixed prototype that further resembles the final product, maybe even capable of proper deployment.
After messing around a bit with various ball sizes ive found that this can provide reasonable rollers positions from ball sizes anywhere from 5"(fuel) to 13"(2019 cargo), but im sure you could just make the arms longer if you really needed any bigger.
how possible would it be to modify the system to not require a frame and wheels? adding onto that what is the bare minimum required to get it functional aside from the side plates, shaft, wheels, and power driving?
I added an assembly that doesn’t use a full drive base instead it just uses some 3D-printed feet to maintain the proper height off the ground. The only issue that might arise with a setup like this would be it trying to tip over, but that could probably be solved by just having a student holding it down somehow. The initial thought behind having it be a full chassis was that a chassis needs to be built anyway might as well use it for intake testing, even if it isn’t wired yet.
This is awesome! Could you add some kind of ruler scale to each slot? That would help with translating your prototype geometry back into cad, and could help make sure both sides are set up the same.
