(9/13/2024) This coming week I will be working on designing the general dryer unit for the filament flip-flop unit. This unit should work while the printer is off to ensure that the filament remains in good condition to avoid any problems while printing. I will be working with my team to come up with a list of parts to integrate with the unit and also researching the best way to go about keeping the effects of the elements away.

(9/22/2024)
This week, we primarily worked on the presentation to present to the enterprise and a list of parts/the way certain aspects of our project will be integrated together. Still unsure of how exactly we want to do the extruder portion of the project, we focused in on the external design as we decided how the box will be and decided to change the placement of the clips to the bottom instead of the top of the container. We purchased some parts for the project and will proceed with those likely this coming week.
My goal this week involves deciding the final design for the dryer unit and working on coming up with the design for the filament switcher (extruder portion). A list detailing this goal follows:
- Brainstorm and research dryer unit options to determine which one best matches with the description in our plan
- Brainstorm and research options for the extruder/switcher to determine the best course of action for implementing that
- Figure out which parts are needed for the switching unit and order parts for that or at least narrow down the list to order parts for this unit this next week.
Concerns for the coming week
- Coming up with the switching unit is going to be a pretty big task, it is likely that researching this unit will take longer than this week as we have other pending tasks at hand. It is important that we pick a design that will not clog or cause issues down the line.
(9/29/2024)
This week was a chaotic week with all the events of career fair so it was hard to get all of the goals accomplished. We started a shared drive for CAD files and finalized and ordered some more parts. Since we are awaiting parts to come in, a delay has taken place. Originally we chose to use fusion 360 for CAD but ended up going with onshape instead as it was easier to share files. We are still pondering the best way to go about the switching unit, hopefully a consensus will be made in the next meeting. Goals for this week rely heavily on parts coming in. Once parts come in, we can measure them and create the unit to scale with precise features in onshape. I will be working in onshape on the dryer unit. Collectively, we will be coming up with slides and preparing for CDR.

(10/03/2024)
We made some modifications to our plan for the device. We received some input during CDR that lead us to decide on a Ramps 1.4 board in correspondence with an arduino for the sensor/motor controller board(s). We are waiting on the Ramps board to come in and some of our teammates are working on programming a plug in to interact with octoprint.
(11/01/2024)
After some more thought and modeling in CAD, we came up with a new design for the filament holder and started the print for that. We got the LCD screen hooked up on the device to display temperature stats. The filament rollers are now printed and assembled as well.
11/15/2024
We have been working on coming up with a bowden connector for the filament to flow through and be detected while in this unit. This piece will be how the device determines if there is filament in that tube and determines which roll is being used. We have made a lot of versions of this but hopefully have settled on one at last. We are working on printing that to test it out and see how it works.
12/01/2024
We have assembled the device and it is functioning, a few things just need to be worked out. Currently the device utilizes only 2 rolls of filament but we believe it will be easy to expand this to 4 rolls in the future (likely next semester). One issue we have noticed is how long it takes for the unit to heat up, this will also likely be an adjustment for next semester.
1/17/2025
As a team, we have gone over what we would like to work on this semester and divided up roles. I will mostly be on the electrical portion this semester. We have established project goals and agreed upon the things that need to be tampered with this semester. We would like to get a better heating element, be able to switch the device on and off instead of plugging in and unplugging it, expand the capacity from 2 rolls of filament to 4 rolls, and rework the wiring configuration among other things.
1/24/2025
Not a whole lot has occurred this week as we had a presentation to give and were therefore working on that during out meeting time. We ordered some more parts and once those come in we will be modifying the device. We decided on a new heater which is more like a space heater than the 3D-printer bed unit and heat sink we were using in the previous edition of the filament flip flop unit. I will be wiring in the switch for power control likely this coming week and we will go to work expanding capacity for the filament rolls which mostly will be printing and assembling more parts and putting those all into the assembly (then of course modifying the program a little bit).
