I was fortunate enough to be a part of the installation of very first MIT fab labs in Kerala. A team from MIT including, Prashanth, Matt, Sam Calish and the Director of the fab foundation, Sherry Lassiter came to Kerala to setup the lab and it was exiting to work with them and see the whole lab setup in no time. Prashanth, Matt and Sam were the research scholars under Neil, working in varied and very interesting field of research.
Usually Fab Labs take a while to setup but in our case each of the labs were to be prepared in a span of 2-3 days. Couple of big events were in order, Neil was to visit Kerala in person and inaugurate the opening of the Fab labs and Chief Minister of the state of Kerala was to be present etc.
The way things unfolded quickly and efficiently with the help of the MIT team was a sight to see.
I was mostly involved in setting up Shopbot and the computers. Anybody who has attempted to setup a shopbot would usually have a tale to tell, getting the shopbot square is a big deal. At the first installation which happened at Trivandrum, Sam and me started assembling the shopbot based on the instruction booklet. Getting the T nuts mounted in the holes and slide through the T slots frustrated us a couple of times. Too many threads engaged and the nuts wont pass through and too little engaged the nuts would come of in the the t slot and it another story to get them to align with the nut again and engage with the thread while inside the T slot. We went through the tedious and heavy process of assembling the shopbot and finally the shopbot was setup square and perfectly fine. I saw Sam very and wondered was that that big of a deal. Apparently Sam got it right with a relative ease and at the first attempt. I understood better why Sam was so happy and whats the big deal about getting the square when I started assembling the shopbot again in Cochin with Matt. All I ever heard about Shopbot was square.
I began the same process of assembling the shopbot with Matt. Matt's strategy was a little different from Sam's. Matt believed that the nuts and bolts should be tightened the hell out right from the beginning, while Sam didnt bother about tightness of the nuts bolts much and tightened everything later after getting everything square. Matt Insisted on how tight the nuts and bolts should be, actually I found myself lacking in power to tighten the nuts as compared to Matt. Finally while mounting the Gantry on top the bed we faced a lot of problem. There were 4 freewheel/rolling bearing, 2 in each side which roll over the two linear V slide on either side of the structure. We found that at least one of the wheel dint perfectly mate with the V slide at one point. We had to loosen the nuts again jiggle the entire structure slightly at different points so that we could get things right, but none worked to satisfactory degree. Continuing with installation we further ran into problems, I wasn't present for the electrical connections part and apparently the machine ran into some problem. Matt was visibly angry, It was his first installation and things were looking bad and he really got stressed out. Matt stayed whole night and with solitude worked on the machine but couldn't get it working properly. We came back in the morning to hear that he had worked further on squaring the machine and recheck electrical connections but it wasnt working still. But to our surprise Prashant ran the machine and it ran just fine. We figured Matt had missed something about the software.
I was at Cochin lab when Neil coolly ran a job on the Shopbot.
Later Prashanth took a bunch of us through using some equipments at the fab lab. It was a very quick demo, I was able to do SMD soldering for the first time, and saw the the working of shopbot and some molding and casting magic.
Couple of memorable pics
Sherry jumping into the assembling dust collector for the shopbot.
Sherry and Matt at Cochin.
Usually Fab Labs take a while to setup but in our case each of the labs were to be prepared in a span of 2-3 days. Couple of big events were in order, Neil was to visit Kerala in person and inaugurate the opening of the Fab labs and Chief Minister of the state of Kerala was to be present etc.
The way things unfolded quickly and efficiently with the help of the MIT team was a sight to see.
I was mostly involved in setting up Shopbot and the computers. Anybody who has attempted to setup a shopbot would usually have a tale to tell, getting the shopbot square is a big deal. At the first installation which happened at Trivandrum, Sam and me started assembling the shopbot based on the instruction booklet. Getting the T nuts mounted in the holes and slide through the T slots frustrated us a couple of times. Too many threads engaged and the nuts wont pass through and too little engaged the nuts would come of in the the t slot and it another story to get them to align with the nut again and engage with the thread while inside the T slot. We went through the tedious and heavy process of assembling the shopbot and finally the shopbot was setup square and perfectly fine. I saw Sam very and wondered was that that big of a deal. Apparently Sam got it right with a relative ease and at the first attempt. I understood better why Sam was so happy and whats the big deal about getting the square when I started assembling the shopbot again in Cochin with Matt. All I ever heard about Shopbot was square.
I began the same process of assembling the shopbot with Matt. Matt's strategy was a little different from Sam's. Matt believed that the nuts and bolts should be tightened the hell out right from the beginning, while Sam didnt bother about tightness of the nuts bolts much and tightened everything later after getting everything square. Matt Insisted on how tight the nuts and bolts should be, actually I found myself lacking in power to tighten the nuts as compared to Matt. Finally while mounting the Gantry on top the bed we faced a lot of problem. There were 4 freewheel/rolling bearing, 2 in each side which roll over the two linear V slide on either side of the structure. We found that at least one of the wheel dint perfectly mate with the V slide at one point. We had to loosen the nuts again jiggle the entire structure slightly at different points so that we could get things right, but none worked to satisfactory degree. Continuing with installation we further ran into problems, I wasn't present for the electrical connections part and apparently the machine ran into some problem. Matt was visibly angry, It was his first installation and things were looking bad and he really got stressed out. Matt stayed whole night and with solitude worked on the machine but couldn't get it working properly. We came back in the morning to hear that he had worked further on squaring the machine and recheck electrical connections but it wasnt working still. But to our surprise Prashant ran the machine and it ran just fine. We figured Matt had missed something about the software.
I was at Cochin lab when Neil coolly ran a job on the Shopbot.
Later Prashanth took a bunch of us through using some equipments at the fab lab. It was a very quick demo, I was able to do SMD soldering for the first time, and saw the the working of shopbot and some molding and casting magic.
Couple of memorable pics
Sherry jumping into the assembling dust collector for the shopbot.
Sherry and Matt at Cochin.
Sherry and Me before saying bye.
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