January Update

News Jan

Happy New Year!

Finally after being quiet, we are having some progress to show.  For those of you who don’t know OSLOOM originated in Chicago, but half of the team now lives in NE Ohio. All year we have been working diligently on continuing to realign all the pieces to be able to co-develop in 2 locations. All hardware development is still taking place in Chicago and we have traveled a few times this year to Chicago to continue building. Hardware development is pushing forward thanks to Gary and Ed. Software development though has now completely shifted to Ohio. NorthEast Ohio software dev Chris Yanc has joined our software development team. As a reminder we wanted to keep our Alpha team relatively small and will release all plans and details once we have a working alpha prototype. Just keep in mind that all of this is a volunteer effort, therefore putting deadlines is an extremely difficult undertaking. Currently we are estimating to have completed 39% of Alpha. Plans and material lists will be released upon completion of Alpha, which will be done in 2012.

Here is a brief digest as to where we are:

  • The solenoid carriage housing is complete and solenoids are firing at the heddle catches. Heddle protoypes got lasercut and tested with, test showed a need for redesign which we are currently working on.
  • Completed the prototype for the rake, lots of work will now go into completing the main housing.
  • The actuator moves and most of the motor controller code is completed, thanks to Ed Bennett. We are now working on the software conversion component to achieve true movement/fire test.

NOTE: Currently we are only working on a single bank achieving a resolution of 320 heddles at 32″ width. The goal is to make it scaleable so we can run more banks, with the Alpha goal being 3 banks.

Following are photos of the progress of our last build session in December in Chicago. Lots of work still remains, but we are definitely pushing hard.

 

What’s next:

  • Complete the control housing.
  • Marry the actuator to the control housing.
  • Design and develop the software conversion and logic.

Once one of the bank is fully operational we will kit the weaving table together, including reed/beat bar, and the transport beams. Even though this will be a big chunk of the main design, it makes no sense to get that going before the “brain” aka the actuator bank is actually complete.

We hope this goes into a good amount of detail without highlighting every little idiosyncrasy. Keep your fingers crossed for good progress, send good vibes,
it truly helps.

And thank you so much for your continued support and interest.

Another build session is planned for February and we will post more then. We will be slowly updating the individual pages on the site with content in the meantime. It’s going to be a busy and fruitful year!!!

~margarita – lead instigator

~markus – project manager

 

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