-Kipling
FPath is a project to explore the possibilities of the Feynman Path to Nanotechnology. Essentially this means using tools to make small tools which then make smaller tools. See the main FPath Project page for more details.
This experiment demonstrates the effectiveness of closed loop error correction to make inherently poor quality hardware driven at larger scales produce accurate output at a smaller scale.
The target goal of this experiment is to:
Demonstrate that closed loop control is a viable error reduction option when having large machines make smaller machines which then make smaller machines.
This experiment is intended to verify a hypothesis which which will be useful in future Feynman path experiments. If the errors in the path of a tool head can be removed then the it will be much easier to have larger tools construct smaller tools. This is important because as machines make smaller machines, the effects of errors compound.
This experiment made no changes to the experimental infrastructure and the only hardware addition was the construction of a pantograph device. Minor changes were made to the Walnut software. The starting point for this experiment is Walnut Server/Client version 00.02.07 and the changes made have been released as version 00.02.08.
Below is a specific list of the steps involved in reaching the goal. All of these steps are discussed in considerably more detail in the video which documents this experiment.
The experiment was successful. Actually, the results of the closed loop control on the movements of the micro end exceeded expectations and resulted in near perfect circles being recorded by the pantograph recording mechanism.
The two images above demonstrate the path taken by the micro end of the pantograph. The image on the left shows the path (it is supposed to be a circle) when the pantograph was controlled on the macro end. The image on the right shows the path taken by the micro end when the control was applied to the micro end. The following video provides much more documentation of this experiment.
This experiment was also discussed in a post on the RepRap Blog: The Pantograph
This experiment is now complete. The Walnut software associated with this experiment can be found under Commit ID: 6a96848 on the GitHub repo.
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