To-do List and Check Out Our Updated Schedule (Applied on to Our Old Schedule)

1. Cut out all remaining parts (Base, walls, and axles of cart)
2. Press fit all bearings, wheels, and axles together *Make sure to consult Bob about fits
3. Assemble all parts together (Walls to base, axles to base, and MCM to axles)
4. Re-adjust our gear ratio to allow for the wedge to drop faster behind the balls
5. Apply some soft material to the edges of our wedge and arm to make sure it doesn't harm the arena. Also, apply material to wheels to allow them to grip the arena better.
6. Make sure that when all components are assembled, they will fit the volume constraints
7. Test out how the motors work with the axles and the wedge
8. Hook up control box and make sure we know how to manuver all of our parts
9. Do test runs to make sure that there isnt any thing else needed
10. MAKE VIDEO
11. dont have a panic attack, jk :)

Thanksgiving Break and Looking Ahead

We can all agree that Thanksgiving break was too short, and came at the wost time possible. With tons to do ahead before the actual competition, I know 95% of our class is going to be stressed and stretched to their limits. Our MCM and total engineering review went well, but we realized that we have to make the whole cart and assemble all of the parts before Thursday. With our updated schedule, we have elected Thursday and Friday to be our trial and error days. That only leaves 3 days to manufacture the parts, in a lab with everyone else trying to do the same thing. I know that me and a few of my fellow teammates will attempt to dodge the frenzy by completing as many parts earlier in the day by getting to the shop right when it opens. This week we need to make the cart, press all gears and bearings to axles, increase our gear ratio to allow for a higher rpm of the motor, and make final tweaks to the design (like adding friction tape to the wheels or Teflon to the wedge). This week we will be using the lathe, mill, and the laser cutter for our last components.
We have a feeling that right now we are just going to make requirements. It would have been nice to win or to really be confident in our machine, but looking at other's progress, it is a little intimidating. This is a picture of the front axle we are going to manufacture from the 3/8" aluminium rod by using the band saw, mill and lathe to cut it down to size to fit inside the wheels.

Exam and More MCM

Last week we did a lot of of our MCM manufacturing because we knew that this week we would be pretty busy with our exam. We took it on Tuesday, and from what we surveyed, no one finished and everyone was just happy to have it over. We did a lot of touching up of our main components, added an angle to our wedge. We also made threads within our wedge with a hand tap. There were two problems that arose with the hand-tap, our part was too thick to have the tap go through all the way. Marv was able to help by forcing a screw of the same size through the bar-stock, therefore forcing threads. The other problem was from the type of threads. It turns out that the threaded rod has Sharp V threads, while the hand-tap provided to us is Unified because when the edges of the threads were compared, one was sharp and the other was rounded. This means that it is very hard for the threaded rod to go through our wedge, which means we might have to find a new hand tap or re-do the tapping with a slightly bigger diameter. The rod has to go through the wedge easily in a power-screw formation. This will allow for our motor to raise and lower the wedge without a lot of torque needed, therefore extending the life of the motor.
This coming week, we are going to have to assemble all of our parts as well as finish the rest of our engineering. We will also have to get a head start on the rest of the manufacturing finished earlier on in the week, that way we can allow for the most time possible to test our machine.

Milling pictures

Us using the drill bit on the mill in order to make a few holes in our rail component, and Corey making sure that everything is in working order.

Motor Lab and MCM Manufaturing

This week started off with the motor lab in our lab section. We weren't able to finish in the time allotted, but almost everybody else didn't either. Wednesday we tried to continue with our lab, but was unable to because all of the aluminum shafts were being used. We were required to come back in later that day and try to finish. After burning out a motor because a previous user had set the starting voltage on the voltage source too high, and having a group take our coupling, we were able to finish as well as get the extra credit. The lab report was written without any outstanding problems and was able to turn everything in on time.
Unfortunately we had signed up to do a lot of our manufacturing for our MCM on Wednesday and Thursday, but due to the unforeseen complications with the motor lab and not being allowed to have 250 team members in the machine shop, we were forced to do all of our manufacturing on Friday. Our team made sure to get to the shop when it opened and worked until we got almost all of the parts done. We will still have to manufacture after the exam on Tuesday due to an unavailability of the mill.
We ordered some material from McMaster on Monday, and received it on Wednesday. It is solid aluminum 061 bar-stock, .75"x.75" so that we may be able to mill it next week into the wedge component of our module. We used the laser jet, band saw, and a little bit of the mill on Friday. Now it is up to us to finish the wedge component and get through the exam on Tuesday.

Most Critical Module - Pictures

And CAEN is back up and functioning:

Most Critical Module

The past week was spent finalizing and analyzing the most critical module of our machine. For our machine, we determined the most critical module to be the arm module. Without the arm, our team has no way to score, and little options for defense, thus the arm is essential to the machine. Our arm consists of a rail piece, a threaded rod, and an extension wedge. Initially the rail and extension are fitted together and the extension is then extended using the threaded rod.

We analyzed the critical module to calculate the torque required to lift arm with the weight of all the balls acting on it. We also created part drawings for the parts we will be manufacturing for the most critical module, as well as a bill of materials, and a manufacturing plan for each of the parts.

After the design review and other conversations with our GSI, our team has decided to continue with our basic design with the intent to add more complexity as time permits. We determined it would be much better to have a simple machine that functions than an over complex machine that doesn't function.

After some experimentation, we found that our swinging arm was having issues moving the rubber balls. They would get caught between the wedge and the wall and prevent any motion from our arm. We decided to add a plastic plate over our wedge to minimize this issue. The plate would be larger than the wedge, fitting into the slot very tightly so there is no room between the wall and the wedge for the ball to get caught.

Unfortunately, the CAEN computing labs were not cooperating today, thus pictures of the Most Critical Module will be posted shortly.