# Base Scaffold System The Base Scaffold is your electronics workbench in the cloud. Functioning as the electro-mechanical foundation for all projects in Adom's Cloud Lab, our facility in Fort Worth, TX is home to a constantly increasing store of base scaffolds. Each base scaffold is a blank canvas for fully customizable electro-mechanical projects. Every project begins in a **digital twin** environment, where the layout is implemented in software: molecules are positioned and wires drawn to establish the project's electrical connections. When the design is complete, the customer clicks **Build** — and Adom's autonomous systems take it from there, carrying a base scaffold from storage through the assembly process and into the customer's reserved workcell for ongoing evaluation and development. ## How a Customer Interacts with the System Customers never need to handle a base scaffold directly — scaffolds live exclusively in Adom's Fort Worth facility, and all physical work is done by workcells or Adom's team. ### Project Assembly Projects are built from **molecules** — PCBs designed with machine pins and contacts for base scaffold and workcell interfacing. A project is mounted onto its base scaffold by the **Molecule Workcell**: robotic pincers pick up each molecule by its corner machine pins and insert it into the base scaffold's contacts. The scaffold then moves to the **Wire Bending Workcell**, where wires are bent and inserted — also by robotic pincers — to establish all of the project's electrical connections, both among molecules and to the [control panel](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/base-scaffold-control-panel). ### Design Envelope - Workspace: **576 mm × 576 mm** (X × Y), with large contacts evenly distributed at **32 mm spacing** center-to-center. - Maximum project height: **200 mm** in Z (current). - Larger workspaces are available upon request. ### Subscription and Allocation Customers subscribe to Adom's Workcell service for prototyping their electrical projects. Base scaffolds are an amenity provided for active project development within the terms of that subscription. ### End of Project All project files are saved to our wiki ([wiki.adom.inc](https://wiki.adom.inc) — Adom's GitHub of electronics for the AI age). When active development is complete, customers choose either to: - **Tear down** — wires are disposed of, molecules move to storage for future use, and the base scaffold is prepared for its next project; or - **Keep the project intact** on its base scaffold and move the entire system into storage at our facility. ## How the System Interacts with Workcells and the Factory When a customer clicks **Build**, the autonomous systems in Adom's facility coordinate the base scaffold's journey: from storage, through the project assembly process (the Molecule and Wire Bending Workcells), and finally into the customer's reserved workcell for ongoing evaluation and development. Movement of a base scaffold from one workcell to another is handled autonomously by AMRs or, in some cases, by a skilled member of the Adom team. A base scaffold enters and leaves a workcell by sliding in on rails. Each scaffold carries a **barcode**, which is how the factory knows which scaffold — and which project — is where. On arrival at a workcell, the scaffold goes through a three-step handshake before work begins: 1. **Alignment check** 2. **Electrical connect** 3. **Project verification** ## Mechanical Design *This section is owned and populated by **James** and **Luke**. Skeleton below; expand each subsection in place.* ### Panels Panels provide the scaffold's contact interface for mounting molecules. The contacts are **[Large Contacts](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/machinecontactlarge)**, arranged in an **18 × 18 grid** at 32 mm spacing center-to-center across the 576 mm × 576 mm workspace (see [Design Envelope](#design-envelope)). A molecule's machine pins press into the contacts, which are essentially retainer clips. On the base scaffold, contacts serve a mechanical role only — the project's electrical connections are made by wires (see [Wiring](#wiring)). ### Alignment Sheet The alignment sheet uses a kinematic coupling plus fiducials to give precise, repeatable alignment from one workcell to the next, and provides rigid support for heavy projects — up to a maximum project mass of **20 kg**. The sheet is **8 mm** thick. ### Factory Mobility The scaffold slides into workcells and can move around the factory without tearing the project down. **UHMW sliders** attached to the bottom of the base scaffold let it slide in and out of workcells. Once taken out of a workcell, base scaffolds and their projects are stored on **racks**. ### Wiring Scaffold wiring is bent automatically by machine. Two solid-core gauges are used, and there is no hard signal/power division between them — the gauge matches the contact family it plugs into: - **14 AWG** — sized for the **Large** machine pins ([standard](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/machinepinlargestandard), [short](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/machinepinlargeshort)) and [Large Contacts](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/machinecontactlarge). - **24 AWG** — sized for the **Medium** machine pins ([standard](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/machinepinmediumstandard), [short](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/machinepinmediumshort)) and [Medium Contacts](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/machinecontactmedium). For detailed specs — insulation, bend limits, current ratings — the individual part pages (collected in the [Adom Machine Parts Library](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/adom-machine-parts-library)) are the source of truth. At a high level, Large Contacts are rated ~20.8 A and Medium Contacts ~6.4 A. **Termination.** The wire bending machine strips the enamel off the ends of each wire, and the wires are then plugged into contacts. **Routing.** Medium contacts are constrained to a 2 mm grid and Large contacts to an 8 mm grid; wires typically travel in 2 mm channels in XYZ space. ## Control Panel The system's electrical front door — specifications and the connector/disconnect interface — is documented on its own page, maintained by **Caleb**: ➡️ **[Base Scaffold Control Panel](https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/base-scaffold-control-panel)** (linked as a dependency of this page)