Other Nextera Robotics Projects
Similar to the basket gripper project, the other work I did at Nextera Robotics involved similar levels of CAD work and Fabrication. Some of these however inovlved more technical skills like dynamic loading analysis within CAD as a way to inform their design. Here you will find some of those other projects from Nextera. I will explain their purpose, the skills used and learned from them as well as provide images.
Router Housing End-Effector
When I was working at Nextera during 2021, we had a concept for a factory that could manufacture walls and wood components for houses. This would be accomplished by a set of six-axis robot arms that utilize different end-effectors for cutting, routing, drilling, stapling etc. Instead of design end-effectors to do these processes from scratch we opted to take off the shelf tools and encase them in an arm attachement housing.
CAD Assembly of Router Assembly
Photos of Holder in Real Life
The first of these housings I made was for a hand router. This one is fairly simple, the outer casing is made of water-jet cut aluminium and surrounds the router on all sides except for top and bottom. These sheets have holes where steel rods are supposed to go through so that they can hold the router in place and add structural stability to the housing. At bottom there is an oppening for the router head that does the cutting and at the top is a adapter plate so it can attach to the robot arm. After water-jet cutting the pieces I assembled them with the router inside with sucess. Unfortunately I was not there long enough to test it but I was able to pass my design on.
Staple Gun Holder
I made an aditional end-effector for the same robot arm factory concept but this time to hold staple guns. The key difference with this end-effector is that it was designed purely for aesthetic purposes and not functional. This end-effector was used in a photo session to promote the Nextera factory concept, so its goal was mainly to look the part of an end-effector, while providing a housing that functionality could later be engineered into.
CAD Assembly of the Staple Gun Holder
I Made this end-effector to look similar to the router module, so it is also using water-jet cut sheets as the casing and steel rods to hold the staple guns upright. There are four metal pillars that connect the base to the arm attachement plate along with more metals bars horizontally that hold the steel rods.