How to ease the assembly stage 101

While we are still intensely working on assembling and programming the rover and the sensors, we thought that we should detail the 3D design of the robot, for a better understanding of our project. This was the first step we took in order to have a proper work schedule:

Firstly, we were excited to see how our secondary mission would actually look like, so Andrei immediately started the sketch the two mini research stations, as the shape of the rover depended on their size. We had to create or download (depending on the online availability of the design) of the electronics, because we wanted everything to fit perfectly. After a lengthy process of adding every pin to the design of the parts, we were ready to assemble all the parts in a main 3D design. So now we had to create the baseplate, add the wheels and the motors. After we finished that, we needed to place the motor driver, the battery and the Arduino Mega on the baseplate, being as close as possible to each other. Of course that wasn’t very difficult as the first story of the rover wasn’t that packed with components. We also added the Geiger radiation sensor. Now we could technically move the rover, but our secondary mission was far from complete in the design. So the second story had to contain a lot of things: The two mini research stations and their launching mechanisms, the gripper’s mechanism, the SGP30, the BME680, the Raspberry PI, the NRFL01+, the breadboard and the 5 Volt Regulator. There are definitely a lot more components on there but with a good reason: The water won’t reach that height. Last thing that we had to do was to place the camera and the solar panels on the roof. And that’s it. Andrei and Teon were done with the 3D Design!

Or at least that’s what they thought but Andrei soon realized that the design was totally unfinished: The parts were too big to print and we didn’t have any proper idea of how we would assemble the rover. Andrei did an incredible job, coming up with very ingenious ideas to solve these problems. He divided each story in 4 parts and created small parts with which we would assemble the four parts into one, and the two stories together. He had to “drill” each hole into the design and I for one am sure it was a heroic act for the team.