Wednesday, April 26, 2017

4/26/2017 Blog #25

Hi,
this week I did not do anything except order thermistors for Jez since the one in his 3D printer broke and his printer would not work without knowing the temperature to gauge it (thermistors). I organized all the receipts for our team and will visit the A.S. in the coming week to get reimbursed. However, we are trying to figure out if we need one more spool of PLA, if we don't, it will be close. I also worked on paper #3 that was due today. In the coming weeks, I also need to prepare for our final presentation which is May 12.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

4/19/2017 Blog #24

Hi,
this week I documented and organized all of the receipts onto a single Bill of Materials to send to Eric because he wanted it. I will be completing it to later submit to the A.S. to get refunded for. We are pretty certain that is the last of the stuff we need to purchase. If anything, we would need more PLA since we want to print out more of the wider U-brackets for connecting corners, straights, and stations, since there is more stress there. Aside from that, I have been focusing on my other classes since one of our great milestones (The Paseo Prototyping Faire) is completed. I helped reassemble the track and presented on Wednesday the 12th. Right now, we do not have any plans to change the track itself (other than slot the vertical posts) since we don't want to fix what's not broken.
This week I will probably begin working on the one page summary due on the 24th.

Monday, April 10, 2017

4/12/2017 Blog #23

Hi,
this week I came in several times for several hours each day to finish up the two tracks. Drilling holes, countersinking, filing, disassembling, and assembling. On Saturday, I showed up at 8 AM to help assemble - we ran into several problems, but we managed to fix them with some patience. I also spoke with a bunch of people to give them an idea of what our project was about and to answer any questions they had. It was quite an exhausting week, but I'm glad the rush is over (we won't need to worry until Maker's Faire).

This week, I will be focusing on the presentation. I have already documented all of the receipts and posted them in the presentation. I already started the presentation and it is almost complete - it will be done by Wednesday (today is Monday). I updated the Gantt Chart as well. After the presentation, we will reassemble the track so other teams can use it to test and we will slowly improve the track and fix any issues with it.

Monday, April 3, 2017

4/3/2017 Blog #22

Hi,
we had spring break this week, but we still came into the design center to work on the project. The project is taking more time than expected (much like most people, we underestimated the workload). Every time we think we're close, it ends up taking a bit longer because we're looking for a screw here, messing up a cut, grinding a few more pieces than thought, drilling a hole there. Mistakes are inevitable, but inconveniences are also quite time-consuming (a previously planned vacation, closed tech shop, late shipment, etc.). We are 99% done with the first track, we just need to grind out a few things for smoother interactions between bogie and track to fit the needs of the control team. We drilled out a lot of the holes for the second track, but needed to weld some stuff which we brought to Redwood city for (finished on Sunday). We also finished assembling most of the second track. We just need to fix some kinks and we will be ready in time for Paseo.