Most of us take for granted the ease with which we can purchase and use complex machinery. We seldom think about how those machines came to be or the challenges engineers face in designing and creating the assembly manuals that are so essential to using them.
The INTERFACER project’s Open Source Hardware Tools research team, J.C. Mariscal-Melgar and Pieter Hijma support the Fab City Hamburg Open Lab Starter Kit (OLSK) with innovative research by semi-automatically generating high-quality assembly manuals.
The OLSK is a set of Open-Source digital fabrication machines, developed with rapid prototyping methodologies. Building manuals for such machines is very time consuming and automating the workflow is a major challenge.
CAD (Computer Aided Design) files are the start of any machine design. Traditionally, there is no link between CAD design files and documentation. This can be a problem when it comes to creating an assembly manual.
The research proposes a solution based on a software CAD workbench and a textual specifications. This exciting work will support the ecosystem for creating beautiful manuals in shorter times.
For more information, check out our latest publication [1].
Special thanks to: Daniele Ingrassia, Marc Kohlen, and Liane Sayuri Honda, along with the entire crew of InMachines. Your exceptional support and inspiration have been invaluable.
[1]: Semi-Automatic Generation of Assembly Instructions for Open Source Hardware: https://openhardware.metajnl.com/articles/10.5334/joh.56
