For this second milestone I completed all the wiring for my project. First I had to connect the stepper motors to the motor driver. By connecting stepper motors to the motor drivers, I will be able to control the stepper motors with code uploaded to the arduino. Then I attached the stepper motor drivers to a PCB board to make everything look cleaner. After that, I attached capacitors to the motor drivers. The capacitors are used to energize winding phases to create a rotating magnetic field while the motor is running. 

After doing that, I reached the point where I had to attach the pen moving mechanics. Originally, I was going to use a servo motor to move the pen up and down but upon further inquiry, I realized I could use another motor already present in the DVD players I had disassembled earlier in the project. This DC motor was already set up to move a plastic base up and down once provided a power source. I wired it to a microcontroller to control it. The microcontroller was also attached onto the PCB board. 

Some challenges I faced throughout the project was figuring out how to wire everything but this was solved just by researching how specific parts needed to be wired to others. Another problem I faced is that I realized that I currently need 2 power sources to move my motors. One for the arduino and another for the motor drivers. Eventually, my goal is to cut it down to one.

For this first milestone, I completed the base of my project. I had to disassemble 2 DVD players to get the 4 wire micro stepper motors and the rails. Later, these will serve to move the pen around to draw. I attached the 2 motors and railings perpendicular to each other that way one can move left and right while the other can move forward and back. In order to attach them perpendicular to each other, I scraped together parts from the DVD player. I attached the railings to the DVD holder and mounted that onto the outer shell of the player. Most things were either connected by screws or by hot glue. In addition, I also created the platform that will eventually be connected to the x-axis platform, serving to act as a platform for the pen to draw on.

Throughout this first milestone, I faced a myriad of issues. Most of them came up when I finished disassembling the DVD players. Initially, I was going to mount the rails onto wood platforms but at the time, the wood had not shown up. Because of that, I decided to test the arduino and the motor driver with a stepper motor that an instructor provided. While testing, I realized that the motor driver I was using could only connect to one stepper motor. Because of that, I found that I needed to either use 2 of the motor drivers I was already using or use a different smaller motor driver. I decided to use a different one because it would require less wires. Another problem I faced was scraping parts to replace the wood platforms I was gonna use. Instead of attaching the railings onto the wood, I decided to use parts of the DVD player which proved challenging because most of the parts were not flat and already had holes. Because of that, this step took a lot longer than I had originally planned for.

During this entire process, I learned a broad range of things such as learning how to use a dremel and a drill. I also learned how to wire my Arduino to a motor driver, although I likely will not use the motor driver as I opted to use the other motor driver that is wired differently. In addition to that, I also learned how stepper motors work. My stepper motors specifically are 2 phase stepper motors which means that inside of it, there are 4 copper coils and 1 magnetic rod. When the current flows into the coils and charges them, the magnetic rod turns which is seen as the motor moving. By charging different coils in different patterns, the stepper motor is able to move in a large range of steps which provides accuracy.