This blog post combines two visits: August 27th and August 28th.
During these two visits, we spent a big portion of the time assembling the remaining part of the arm - the wrist. We first put together the motor with the harmonic drive and attached it to the hand. However, after discussing with the lab leader, we realized that there was a mistake - a missing piece that hindered us from connecting the hand to the arm.
On Friday, the missing piece arrived at the lab. We successfully connected it to the hand and the arm. It was satisfying looking at the finished arm. We were both so amazed at how flawless the design was - every connection between the parts is perfectly sealed. Unfortunately, we can not show the picture on the blog…
As @soysoy444 mentioned in the latest post, we needed to build wire connections from the Maxon servo controller to the national instrument board and tune all the motors. There were two connections that we needed to make - the connection between the motor and the servo controller, and the connection between the servo controller and the National Instrument board. The wiring between the motor and the controller was rather easy to complete, as the wires can be attached using a screwdriver.
On the other end, the connection between the controller and the NI board was more complicated. We needed to hook up a metal piece to each of the wires, emulating a jumper wire, and attach them to the ports.
We also needed to use an analog cable, and pick up 7 pairs of smaller wires inside this cable, to establish connections between the servo controller and the NI board.
The analog cable is composed 8 pairs of wires, each pair marked with red and black dots. The leader told us that in the field of engineering, black typically represents ground and red represents the positive terminal. The silver alloys wires wrapping these 8 pairs of analog wires are also ground connection. It was tedious work and we spent more than 3 hours doing all the wiring, but it was certainly fun, knowing that we will be programming this elegant robotic arm soon.
The leader told us that the wire connection between the motor and the servo controller may be a bit short, so we will be adjusting that during the upcoming visit. We will also connect all the wires to the NI board, and testing the motor. Then, the project will enter the next stage: the software.
