In part one, I talked about what a Delta is and showed my 3D printed articulating Delta arm. Since then I’ve created a frame to hold the arm and mount motors to it.
I used Adobe Illustrator to create the artwork for the top and bottom acrylic base pieces and brought the file over to SYN Shop for cutting.
![Adobe Illustrator file for laser cutting the top of the Delta frame.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/delta_frame_top-300x261.png)
![Laser cut pieces and the delta frame ready for assembly.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Delta-top-bottom-300x224.jpg)
I used threaded rods at each of the 6 hexagon corners to hold the top and bottom pieces together.
![Assembled delta frame with arm hanging down.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Photos-19263-225x300.jpg)
![Assembled Delta frame.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Photos-19265-225x300.jpg)
I used ViaCAD to create the mounting brackets for the servos and 3D printed them out. I ended up doing five revisions to get it right.
![The blue shows the servo mount. The yellow is the mock-up of the actual servo, which is not printed.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/servo_mount_05-300x234.png)
![Various revisions of the 3D printed servo mount.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Delta_mount_revisions-300x225.jpg)
During the process of adding the servo motors I had to re-cut the plastic top to get a better fit for the servos, but also added a few hundred holes in a grid pattern to allow mounting of the electronics as needed. I picked up three standard servos at Pololu.com.
![The servos are mounted into the new brackets and there are steel wires attaching the servos to the armatures.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Photos-19328-300x225.jpg)
![The motors are in the mounts and attached to the Delta frame.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Photos-19326-300x225.jpg)
Next I started adding the electronics. I installed a Nymph board and a RobiCon connector fan-out board.
![Added the Nymph, fan-out, joystick and potentiometer.](http://blog.circuitmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Photos-19329-300x225.jpg)
My next task was to write code. My first goal was to just get the servos moving to make sure that the way I was driving the actuators was sane. Here is the video below of the servos all being driven up and down in “thrust” mode.
Next time i will talk about the code that drives the Delta as well as more video showing the delta working.
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