Andrew Burks

Something I never considered when designing previous versions of Vibratron was its ability to fit through doors.  While the old design could fit through a set of double doors, we wanted the entire robot to be able to fit through a standard door.  This change in criteria required some major changes in the design of a few parts of the Vibraphone.  It also allowed for a few other system upgrades in the process.  Keep in mind that all of the renders here do not include any foam/cloth skin that will be used to contain the balls.

Giant Circle Full of Key Units

The large waterjet circle that held up all of the key units was three feet in diameter.  Combined with the overhang of some of the key units, the diameter of the robot was at nearly five feet.  Separating the giant circle into two large semicircles fixes the problem pretty easily.  Hand grips were added so that the semicircles could be carried easily.  Even though they are 25 pounds each, the semicircles can be carried close to the body with arms locked, which is a requirement for simple transportation of the machine.

Fold Out Wings

Instead of the large fixed upside-down-umbrella style from the previous design, this design has four fold out “wings” that catch the balls and funnel them towards the center.  The overall diameter is six feet when open, but the wings can fold up completely vertically alongside the column.  Between each wing is a pie-wedge shaped piece of cloth or foam.  This has a duel purpose of funneling balls toward the center and regulating the deployment height of the wings.  When the wings are raised, the compliance of the cloth/foam will allow it to fold.

Deeper Square Basin

The previous basin was a thin circle, but our research with the prototype of the recirculation system has suggested that we will need many more balls in the system to reach steady state.  A wide square basin rigidly integrated with the vertical columns can hold the necessary volume of balls.  Four trapezoidal sheets of plastic also keep the balls rolling towards the center of the basin.

After several attempts at getting the 180 separate parts necessary for the previous vibratron key unit laser-cut, we finally found a feasible method for fabrication.  The father of a roboclub member offered to us the use of his large CNC routing table.  Because Acrylic does not machine well (it is much too brittle) some redesign was done to make the key units out of hardboard.

Design Changes

The biggest change between designs was the decision to not remove the material between key points, exchanging concave cutouts for straight lines.  Each new unit is made of five separate pieces of hardboard, connected by wood glue (instead of plastic welding).  Only two parts per unit are unique, instead of 3, which makes machining prep and assembly easier.

Circular Structure with New Key Units

The new key units attach to a horizontal 1/4” plate, just like the previous version.  The only difference is that instead of two clips and two colder pins, these units attach with just a colder pin.  Nothing else in the structure needed to be modified to accommodate the change.

Machining

All of the pieces for all 30 key units can fit on five sheets of 2’x4’ hardboard.  Hopefully these items will all be machined by the end of the winter break so focus can be shifted to the design and fabrication of the structure instead.  Below is an example of how the pieces fit on a sheet of hardboard.  The labels are engraved .02” into the board, and everything else is a profiling cut.

Design

After bouncing off of the vibraphone keys, the ball bearings need a soft place to land and a central basin to roll into.  The basic idea behind the design was to make an upside-down umbrella, with the skeleton on the outside.  Stretching 1/4” foam between sections of aluminum angle is a cheap way to cover a lot of area.

Ball collector

Ball collector basin skeleton

Incorporation into Full Model

While previous renders imagined the 180 pieces of acrylic supporting the keys to be red, clear acrylic being about 35% cheaper prompted a slight design change.  We should save about $100 by changing to 1/8” clear acrylic.

The full vibraphone is now 4.5 feet in diameter, and should be about 3.5 feet tall.  The rim of the basin is just 2 feet off the ground, which is good because want people to be able to look into the vibraphone.

Full Vibraphone (without recirculation screw and ball distribution)

Detail view of key unit/basin interaction

While I had made some preliminary designs of the Vibratron structure a few months ago, I can now begin to finalize some of the key support structure as the ball dispensing mechanism is finalized. 

Key Unit

Experimentation showed us that the ideal location of the ball dispenser is with the tube perfectly vertical, six inches above the center of a key tilted at 45 degrees.  A modular unit consisting of 4 pieces of lasercut plastic and a gate mechanism was designed to hold the keys and gates in their proper relative positions.

Key Unit Mounting

A large sheet of 1/4” thick aluminum will be waterjet into a shape that can hold 30 of these key units.  Each unit will be attached to the aluminum by two lasercut clips which are held down by cotter pins.

30 Key Units

With 30 key units on one large piece of aluminum, the weight of the entire assembly is already at 50 pounds with a diameter of over 3 feet.  In the future, the ball recirculation system (an Archimedes screw leading into a paintball hopper) will rise out from the middle of the aluminum circle, and the ball collection system (a foam floor to catch the balls) will stick out below and around the keys.

180 pieces of plastic, over 90 of them unique

There are 6 pieces of lasercut 1/8” red acrylic in each of the 30 key units.  3 of those 6 pieces are unique.  1 of the other 3 pieces has 6 different sizes, and the final 2 are each repeated in all 30 assemblies.

Obviously I did not want to model 98 different pieces of plastic and insert them individually into models.  Fortunately, design tables in SolidWorks are very powerful.  In the end, I only needed to make 5 plastic parts and 5 obnoxious Excel spreadsheets to get an assembly (“Key Unit”) with 30 unique configurations.  Some of the plastic parts even have their note engraved into the side!