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Design your concept.

A project log for OpenESpin

Building an Electrospinning machine for everyone.

douglas-millerDouglas Miller 04/11/2017 at 19:270 Comments

For the first section of the contest, I think I pretty well have the design down pat. The machine is working well, to the current operators limits. Lol.

There is one change I'm considering making. Well, considering is probably not the word to use. I'm pretty darn sure I'm going to make the change. That is the manner in which the homing switch is done. It's fine for a flat table, but I'm working on accessories now, like the rotary, and that changes things a bit.

The different heights of the accessories means I'm not currently homing to an accurate measure of the space between the needle tip and the negative plate. Another problem I've had in the back of my mind is not everyone will use the same length needles I do.

So what I'm thinking, here during the design part of the contest, is to move the homing switch so it can take advantage of different accessories or needle lengths or whatever else comes along. The reason I didn't take a measurement directly from the needle itself is I don't want that switch and it's wiring anywhere around that high kV stuff, leading straight to the control board.

But now I think I have come up with a solution.

What I intend to do is put a switch up on top of the machine where it will get made if the needle and syringe are pushed up when homing the table. I don't think it will take all that much and all these problems go away, and we're assured we're working with the actual measurement between the need and the negative plate. So all that's good.

What I'm not sure about is if I'm taking a chance of bending the needle by letting the table give it a tap up. But I think I can avoid that. We'll see I guess.

At this moment this is the only change I'm considering making to the basic machine.

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