Success!

We've only broken one drill bit and mis-manufactured 3 or four parts!

After spending many late nights in the computer lab engineering our machine on Solidworks, two weeks in the machine shop and 3 or four re-manufactures our machine is only a few steps away from completion.

Our MCM is done and MS's 6,7 and 8 are behind us. Hopefully our machine will be assembled by the end of Wednesday 11/30 and we can start driving on Thursday 12/1.

We are now preparing for MS's 9 and 10, and our inevitable domination of the competition next week!

We will post some pictures of our progress soon!

All Engineering Complete

After a grueling session in the CES lab (supplied with pizza of course) we knocked out all the solidworks parts for the rest of our machine. The design is looking solid, and we minimized the number of machined parts for the rest of our modules.

One issue we ran into while working on the MCM is that we didn't realize how time-consuming all of our precise machined parts were. The advantage of them is that we will have a solid drive-train assembly which will minimize misalignment issues. The rest of our machine should be finished very quickly now that we have the go-ahead from Nassim, which will give us lots of time to practice, a key component in our strategy. Looking forward to making the rest of our machine after break.

D'oh

We're finding out that "measure twice, cut once" is better than "measure once, cut twice"

We've started making our MCM parts, but due to some dimension mis-reading, and other newbie shop errors, we've had to scrap several parts and start over.

Unphased by failure, we press on towards the mark, and gain invaluable experience along the way

Right number of checks = this problem is done. (aka MCM engineering done!)

Last week we finished our Most Critical Module, which for us was our drive train. After many hours of hard work we finished our CAD model for this module, created the drawings for each part, outlined a manufacturing plan for each part and figured out the parts we need to make it happen.

After the go ahead from our GSI, we are making the move to the shop this week. Our goal as a team is to have the most critical module assembled by next week. We also hope to do reproduce the motor lab we finished last week on the double gear box, the motor we chose to use to drive our machine.

It's going to be a busy week! But being the best is rarely easy!

Homework done, let's build something!

This past week we finished the bike and motor labs!

That is what amazing teamwork looks like!

The most important thing to do is look busy...

We learned a lot about linkages, bearings and bushings from the bike lab and are looking forward to applying our new found knowledge to our machine!

After experimenting with the planetary gear box motor and finding the huge losses, we are planning on reproducing the same lab on our double gear box motors so we can see what we can expect from our machine.