Project Update #19

Hello everybody,

in today’s update we will inform you largely about the manufacturing and production, as we received many components from our suppliers in the last months, both plastic and metal parts. Unfortunately, we are still missing some elements due to the covid-19 outbreak. Finally, we will share the progress we made on the software developments over the past few months.

Manufacturing

Even if the covid-19 outbreak has stopped many activities here in Italy, luckily, we kept receiving plastic parts from our injection molding supplier for the assembly of the first batch of machines. Then, with the easing of the measures against covid-19, we were able to come back to our workspace and to move towards production.

In the last weeks, we received the samples of the upper part and the lower one, both made with a smoke finishing similar to the definitive one. Here is the whole dust bin assembled (color and finishing of the plastic frame of the filter are not definitive).

In addition, we received the vacuum system components, as the rotor carter and the vacuum collector, and we got the spindle protection, as well as the sensor’s structures, both the front and back shells:

Lately, we have been talking a lot about injection molding. But it is not all about plastic parts, there are also many metal components on Goliath. Over the past weeks, we collected several metal parts starting with components in aluminum for the handles and the Z-axis area manufactured by extrusion and machining.

Additionally, we received from our partner for die casting molds some components and metal sheets, laser-cut metal components around the motor and the spindle for example.

Software

We are still working on the CAM software development. We have good news from the UX / UI point of view: what we co-designed is taking shape and being implemented in the software, which now has most of the features necessary to work, from the initial set up until the path generation.

The last time we showed you the software, we shared some features like drawing and importing .svg files. Since then, we integrated and tested intensely new features such as the bits library, moving Goliath on the work area in jog mode, and the communication of the sensors’ status. The features are working well, there is still some work to do on the graphics and UX implementation.

Regarding the software development, the next steps are now to fix minor bugs and we want to work on implementing error signals and warnings to avoid damaging Goliath during use. We are also evaluating strategies to save the user’s project if Goliath loses power.

In the next post, we will keep you updated on the manufacturing process, we want to show you the components we keep receiving for the first batch.

Stay safe everyone!

All the best,

Lorenzo, Alessandro, Davide
and the Springa team