The Design and Selection of the Blade and Valve Solutions for the High-Precision Micro-Drawing Wire Machine

The sense of sight is arguably the most common method that our body uses for gathering data of the world around us. However, that primary tool is negated for those who are visually impaired, and thus must be replaced with a new bodily sense. Over the years there have been multiple attempts to determine the second best sense from which the brain can generate the most information, and to create a device that utilizes that sense to gather and relay the data quickly and efficiently. However, the sense that has gained the most favor among users and the most experimentation is that of touch. A haptic display device employs the sense of touch by breaking down an image viewed by the haptic display into pixels; each pixel is then translated to a certain vibrational frequency or electrical charge for the user to feel (depending on the brightness of the pixel). One can then distinguish the feeling of the square-like object through the device, however the main problem that exists among the current haptic display devices is the low-resolution output. The low resolution thus makes it difficult for a user to decipher between objects that share a similar shape, but are still completely different.

By considering a different method of delivering information to the brain via touch, it may become possible to create a haptic display that can relay environmental information to the brain in 64x64 resolution. The alternative solution is to replace the vibrating motors with vibrating cantilever beams, thus allowing more beams to take up a specific area in comparison to vibrating motors. Each beam will vary in length to establish its own natural frequency while also making it easier for each beam’s vibration to be controlled by a single microcontroller. Nathan Eastburn, a student who graduated in the spring of 2018, designed a wire-cutting machine that could pull the beams through a metal plate to strip the beam into smaller cross-sections and cut the beams into the very precise lengths. To further complete the machine, the mechanical aspects of the machine needed to be finalized and installed, specifically the air cylinder valve and blade attachments.

The following report provides the details and thought process in converting the given designs of the air pump and blade systems into the physical additions to the wire-cutting machine. Both systems have further parts that need to be purchased, components that must be manufactured, and/or redesigns to the functionality of the systems; these will be explained for those desiring to continue and complete the assembly of this machine.