The overall process of designing and manufacturing our slotbot took a few twists and turns and hit a few bumps along the way. Our original designs for both the cart and the chute were modified as time went on. We also made a few mistakes during manufacturing process which chipped away at what little time we had to build our bot. However, our finished product turned out to be a very competitive design.
The initial process for design and creativity was done individually and also lead to the first obstacle in developing a final product. Each of us invested a large amount of thought and time developing our own ideas only to have them stripped down by the team. Comprimises were eventually made but it did slow the development of the final design. This could be remedied in the future by starting the group portion of the process before each person narrows their work to a single design.
The manufacturing of our MCM was probably the part of the assignment in which I learned the most. I was very unsure of how to properly and safely use the equipment in the shop prior to this portion of the project. Bob Coury soon became one of the most valuable instructors of the class. I started working in the shop as soon as we were allowed and asked as many questions as I could. It wasn’t long before I became proficient using the lathe, band saw, drill press, laser cutter, and the drilling portion of the mill. However I never did get to use anything involving end milling or auto driven lathe/mill. Hopefully I will get the time to learn these in ME350.
Although the manufacturing process was successful for learning it was also a hindrance for multiple reasons. The first of these reasons is due to either a lack of prior experience or because of a careless mistake made by us. We had a tendency to either not be able to make a desired part or to make a mistake while making a part. A particular case when we couldn’t make a desired part we could not make a cut that we wanted using the available equipment so we turned the single part into two parts. This took more time and also required us to change our CAD drawings. As for the mistakes, there were a lot of them. We at times either did not come the realization about the how parts fit together or carelessly cut or drilled an area that did not need to be. A lot of extra parts were made in order to get the correct part completed.
The other reason the manufacturing process slowed our project was due to availability of equipment. There were 32 teams and 4 lathes and 4 mills (if they all worked). This led to a lot of wait and hope time. Hopefully, this can be resolved for future classes. Perhaps shorter time blocks per team and maybe an earlier availability for the manufacturing portion of the class.
The competition…. As fun as the idea sounded to me in the beginning, I ended up very disappointed when all was said and done. It seemed that the performance of our cart was incredibly dependent upon the power supply we were given. During preliminary testing our cart moved both forwards and backwards quit well, and only had some difficulties in turning right. In order to compensate for our lack of turning we decreased friction on our front wheels. This seemed to work well in the first round of the competition, but not so well in the second round. The first round our cart maneuvered in all directions fairly well, but in the second we could barely even move in the forward direction. Because nothing mechanically changed between rounds it led me to believe the power supply was not as strong. Upon coming to this conclusion I spoke with a few other teams each of which seemed to have had similar problems. Though the competition did not affect our grade it was part of why we all worked so hard on our projects and was slightly irritating to think it could have come down to luck of which battery pack you received. In short yeah to mechanics and booh to electronics.
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