Kiri:Moto transformed FRC 2530 this year!

Just want to say a HUGE thank you for Kiri:Moto!

I’ve previously posted the journey for First Robotics Competition team 2530 (“iNCONCEIVABLE”) on the Chief Dephi forum and the V1 Engineering forum (MPCNC). The V1 forum suggested I cross-post here and I absolutely agree. Stewart and members of this forum should be proud of how much Kiri:Moto can do. It has absolutely transformed what we can do—rapid prototyping is amazing. Production of complex precision parts is no longer a hurdle.

We have a small shop that is shared with a middle school classroom, so not much space for advanced manufacturing tools. We have a small 3D printer, hand tools, a brake and a few saws but didn’t have a CNC or mill. In the pre-season we decided to try and build a CNC with the V1 engineering kit, which was a fantastic learning experience the entire team collaborated on. New students learned how to use a screwdriver and drill, veteran students managed the project. A mentor designed a cart that allowed the CNC to rotate vertical and store in a small space.

The key after building the CNC was our discovery of Kiri:Moto to make toolpaths. We use OnShape as a free multiuser cloud based CAD solution and the Kiri:Moto App that integrates seamlessly made translation of our models into physical parts extremely easy. It was a steep learning curve since none of us had and CNC experience (we made quite a few not-through cuts and many destroyed parts before we discovered z-through and tabs). But now we have 3 students and 2 mentors who can go from concept to CAD to Kiri:Moto to CNC’d part unassisted.

It is absolutely amazing that the team can collaborate on a complex robot build with hundreds of parts, design objects to be 3D printed or CNCd and have all of this functionality for absolutely no cost. Our whole team want to give a genuine, heartfelt THANK YOU to Stewart and everyone else developing, using/testing/troubleshooting Kiri:Moto! We could not possibly have done this without you and your dedication to this incredible software.

Link to the description of our entire project including the plans for our CNC cart are under either of these other discussions/posts.

Chief Delphi Discussion

V1 Engineering Discussion

THANK YOU!!!

Brian
Mentor FRC 2530

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@Dr_B Thanks so much for sharing! It brings me great joy to see KM used in this way. I have fond memories of mentoring an FRC team back in 2001.

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@Dr_B @stewart I second this!

I also run a robotics team and teach engineering. I see a bright future with KM. A bottleneck for my students is always teaching them cam software or slicing software. Often the softwares cost hundreds of dollars and can only be run on one single computer - creating a situation that is impossible to teach 60 students when there’s only one seat. Now my students have a workflow where they take an onshape part, slice it using Kirimoto and then send it to the 3D printers using repetier server. They have learned so much about manufacturing because they’re actually interfacing with the slicing software, etc.

I plan on having my advanced students learn a similar workflow with Cam and using the CNC.

Thank you Stewart!

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