Redesigned for Laser cutting and created finger joints

So now that the main part was over, I started designing the mounts for the 3D design. I also created some grooves for the ESP to fit and the motor to fit and I cut out the holes for the motors and I added fillets and made it perfect for the 3D printing. But later I realized that to make it more efficient we won't be doing 3D printing, we would be using laser cutting. So I had to transform my design from 3D to laser. Initially, I thought it would be easy and we would just use Feviquick or something. But later I realized that Feviquick is not the best approach to deal with such situations, so I need to create some joints for it. And I started to learn more about joints and I found tab joints, finger joints, crisscross joints, head joints, and we have already tried those, I don't know exactly what you call, but there's a slot that I use for the partitions, the bottom and top partitions that I've used. We have created those slots previously but they didn't work really well and they were really really loose. So we tried using the finger joints. So I had no idea about how to make finger joints but it was kind of easy. So I just created a new sketch on my existing body and made the rectangles and the issue was with the dimension as I was not familiar with fusions, most of the tools. So I took help with GetGPT and it told me that it has those rectangular pattern tools. So I started to use that tool and it had some really great results. So then I mirrored everything and for each of my part I had to think where should the joints will go and then I manually created all the joints and yeah then it was ready for the cutting. I wasn't really sure about the dimension as this was the first prototype. So I hadn't selected any dimensions for any of the parts. It was a rough estimate depending on the items that we were using. So I went over CO2 laser cutting machine and it was really really big. So I had to set it up and initiate some of the things and then clean its lance and then load up the board and then the box testing. I also did some few design changes before printing in the laser cut software itself. So it took a bit time to understand how exactly the laser cutter is working but then I understood and I loaded up the designs and created exports for each of the files. So we had around five to six exports and then just exported up and cut it up and the results were good. But as soon as the print finished it looked good but in reality the finger joints were really really loose. I thought that I was familiar with 3d printing but not with laser cutting. So I left some 0.05 mm tolerance. So that was the main issue as after some time I got to know that laser has its own curve connections. So it's around 0.1 mm. So the gap just became 0.15 mm. So it was really really bad but still the design was good and the idea of finger joints was also good. So if I adjust the finger's length then it would work very great. But this one took a lot of time as I had to research about a lot of stuff and the laser cutting was kind of very new to me. I've still not perfected it but I learned a lot.

Started the initial design & components selection

Initially I wanted to make the design a bit unique and cute first I thought of a ninja style but then I switched to a more cuter version! I used gemini to generate the images for the prototype but right now I started working on making a working model of it first then I will work on making it look good!!

Components

• I will be using the drv8833 for its compactness and effictivness for this project
• for the MCU I will consider using esp32 c3 mini to make it a bit light and not loaded with extra unused pins!
• for motors instead of N20 I will be using BO motors only cause I need to fit this in a good budget
• for the gyro I'll use the GOAT MPU6050

Design

as a normal balancer bot I kept the design as a box with head simple but selecting the right design was a little bit tough

CAD

I started the 3D modelling and sketches. I grabbed all stl from grabcad and then started to make the sketch, I followed the design intitally taken but after making my first design I noticed that this feels too compact and might be hard to actually balance so I switched to a more wide design and extruded stuff and placed all the components on there respective places