I was hired at Voltsafe to build a machine that would be able to test the company's current and future products for Canadian electrical certification standards. The 4-month project involved Mechanical, Electrical, and Software, design, construction, and budgeting. I was lucky enough to be given very few, but very important design constraints, and was otherwise allowed to solve the problem as creatively as I liked.
The machine is capable of testing 6 products simultaneously, and each modular fixture has 2 degrees of freedom (Mz & Z). Due to the nature of the certification standards set down by the Canadian gov, the machine is required to run for potentially days on end. With 12 motors running semi-concurrently at that time, I included a current metering safety measure, in case of motor burnout or jamming. The PyQT app that I developed alongside the machine allows the user to design a unique test per product. And is user-friendly enough for anyone in the office to setup, and start a test.