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As developing the Orbit projects isn't only related to developing electronics and firmware, becomes clear when you are building your own prototypes. I've ordered a metal breaking machine to be able to get nice, accurate and clean sheet metal bends. Unfortunately this wasn't proceeding as planned as the breaking machine was far from precise and important settings weren't adjustable at all. So away with the notebook and in to the overall, let's do some metalwork!
I've made all kind of changes to all of the hinging points as they had way too much slack in them. The bending surface wasn't straight at all, actually the metal got already bend while clamping it. To correct this, I flattened the bending surface with a milling machine.
The mechanical stops for the fingers wasn't straight at all, this put all of the fingers out of alignment, which wasn't workable at all.
I've straightened the surface of the mechanical stops with a milling machine, the stops and the bending surface are both ok now. At the moment I'm working on adding two precise adjustable mechanical stops, so I can make really accurate bends, but even better I can get the same bend over different work-peaces. I'm making those two mechanical stops out of two modified calipers, one of those modified calipers can be seen on the pictures below.
So, luckily I can fix all of the bending problems, but it has taking some additional time. Hopefully I will be able to bends those metal sheets parts somewhere during the following week.
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