Construction

There were three major construction processes in the articulating balsa wood bridge project. These were laser cutting out the wood for the bridge and articulation structures, 3-D printing the articulation components, and gluing the wood for the articulation and bridge structures together.

Processes

Laser Cutter

The laser cutter required an AutoCAD drawing to be able to cut the parts, so the pieces were transferred over to an AutoCAD file and then were able to be cut. The material was selected in the lasers settings, giving recommended settings to run the laser at for the best performance. Then the thickness of the materials was inputted, the origins were set, and the laser was ready to do its thing.

3-D Printing

Using the solid works drawings, they could be saved as STL files and sent to the slicer. This then converted them t a 3-D printable file, and then was sent to the printer. The bed was set to 60 degrees C, and the nozzle was set to 200 degrees C as that was recommended for PLA.

Gluing

The gluing process was very straight forward. Glue was placed on the joints of two pieces to connect them, then allowed to dry. The important part was applying pressure to the parts to ensure that the glue had the strongest adhesion possible. This process was done slowly/carefully to allow for the best results possible.

Sanding

Some of the bridge and articulation components required some sanding in order to get a better fit. A few of the 3-d printed pieces ended up undersized, so taking some sand paper to them gave it enough clearance to fit with ease.