Intro to Fab — Assignment 5
On this project, I had to integrate two different materials and a moving aspect. For that, my plan was to build a miniature stadium out of wood, with an acrylic blimp flying around it. The blimp would be attached to a servo motor that can spin around at the control of a potentiometer that users have access to. All Arduino/wires would be stored in a box under the stadium.
I first started by designing the stadium and printing it on cardboard. I went with the look of my favorite college football team’s stadium, Ohio Stadium.
Ohio Stadium for comparison:
I felt good about it, made some minor edits, and went to cut it with wood.
I liked the way the wood looked, and it picked up some height and depth when compared to the cardboard. I then started to build a box to house the units.
My plan for the blimp was to have it connected to a metal rod, with the rod running through a hole in the top of the box where it would then be connected to the servo motor. The servo motor would spin it around the stadium and across the length of the hole on the top of the box.
I got the blimp all printed and hooked up to the servo motor. I couldn’t find any good tape to use to get it to stick, and the servo motor isn’t mine and I felt bad super gluing a metal rod to it, so it ultimately is a little flimsy.
In the end, I closed off the box and cut holes for the Arduino wire and the potentiomoter. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any mechanisms to work. I followed this video on hooking up a potentiometer to a servo motor and using it to control the angle/direction, but I never got the servo motor to move. I ultimately just ran out of time to get it to work. I followed all of the same wire hookups and code, and nothing worked.
At the end, I’m pretty happy with the way the fabrication of the box, the blimp, and the stadium turned out. But, I hate that I couldn’t get any servo motor stuff to work, and it irked me that the metal rod was so flimsy and caused the blimp to fall over pretty easily. I definitely would’ve liked to have this all polished up, but I just ran out of time.
