Highlights of the Week

Hello again! Stitch Studio has been making great leaps and bounds recently! Here are the highlights from this past week.

On the electrical side, Yaning finished the custom PCB design and sent it out to be manufactured. Take a look at that beautiful power and motor control circuit board!

Much progress was made on the software side. For starters, Rachel, Frank, and I finished the first iteration of the g-code communication. Several bugs emerged when testing the entire pipeline (g-code -> g-code transmitter -> stepper motor controller -> motor movement), and the three of us got together to discover and triage them. We found that the Bresenham’s line algorithm that we implemented had an erroneous conditional statement and that our sign function wasn’t working as expected. We also added logic on the Arduino side to “ack” (acknowledge) the g-code commands to ensure that it doesn’t miss any. Lastly, we implemented a delayed interrupt library for needle speed control purposes in the future.

On the mechanical side, Yaning acquired the rest of our screws and assembled most of the frame. Now for the exciting part! The Stitch Studio team put the pieces together, attached a marker to the end of the top stage, and fired up the machine. I’ll let the video speak for itself...

What’s Next?

Here’s what we plan to do this week:

  • Pick up the custom PCB and test the circuits
  • Start designing the embroidery hoop mount
  • Refine the software (set software limits that reflect hardware limitations, implement calibration procedure, etc.)

Stay tuned for our next weekly post, and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates!

Ben