RepSpider Alpha Build

[steamboat]

Hello James,
I even held lectures about part design for manual assembly at the University of Hannover for 4 years...

As ever there is no best solution for this I think. Because we do not have mold costs and don't generate costs with each part number in the inventory or for spare part keeping it is not the goal to focus on standard parts here - but always a good goal!

I have this order in mind when designing 3D printed parts.

1) sturdy design
2) easy to print
3) easy to assemble without instructions

Regarding assembly it is important for me
1) to have symmetrical parts:
-> make them symmetrical even if it is not necessary.
- Add a hole for instance even if this is only used in one or the other orientation
- this saves time during assembly because you don't have to think about orientation and you can't do anything wrong.

2) to have non matching parts where no math is allowed:
-> take the hip and shoulder axles of the RepWalker for instance
- it needs a different axle length for this what can't be detect by the "worker" easily - so I gave this two different parts a different screw distance to make it impossible to do something wrong.

3) "Over-design" asymmetrical parts:
-> if parts have to be asymmetrical make this easy to detect
- For the RepWalker I did this with the spine-left and spine-right...

This just in short...