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Through this process, we decided to laser cut links and supporting structure out of acrylic, and 3D print connecting shafts, smaller support materials, gears, and other 3-dimensional pieces. Another factor that influenced our design was the size of pizza we wanted to be able to cut. Due to material, assembly, and time considerations, we decided to design our robot to be able to slice a 6-inch diameter pizza. This parameter dictated the dimensions of all our mechanism components, shafts, and housing. We were able to determine this dimension through our kinematic analysis. By setting the flat part of our output motion to 6 inches, we worked backwards to determine the necessary link lengths. From there, a housing structure was designed to act as the ground link for both lambda mechanisms and support the rotating pizza platform. The size of the Geneva drive components were determined by the distance between the vertical shaft attached to the platform and the motor input shaft, which correlates to the center to center distance between the Geneva wheel and the Geneva crank. With these dimensions set, we created a CAD model of our final design.
We also created animations of the mechanisms in motion:
View file name Assem1.mp4 height 250 View file name Geneva Animation.mp4 height 250