The biggest risk we face right now is delays and assembly problems caused by the present pandemic. A lot of the testing that must be done normally requires specialty equipment that is not easily accessible outside of campus or prohibitively expensive. Similar issues are faced with assembly of the project including shipping times, equipment condition, and specialized tools. A lot of the changes we made during this week were in an effort to minimize the impact of these changes as well as lower the special requirements for assembly and construction that we relied on in the previous design. We will redesign the mount to reduce reliance on fabricated parts. This will take some time and put us somewhat behind.
We made a significant change to the original system design in switching to a barn door tracker-based design instead of a full equatorial mount. This was in response to the loss of access to fabrication facilities in light of the coronavirus situation, as the new design is mechanically simpler and is more easily constructed with standard components that can be shipped directly from McMaster. This change, and the implications for the capabilities we were aiming to support is fully detailed in our statement of work, which is attached here: http://course.ece.cmu.edu/~ece500/projects/s20-teamb1/wp-content/uploads/sites/83/2020/03/Statement-of-Work.pdf.
To reflect the change to the system design and the time lag caused by the uncertainties of our situation, we’ve updated the schedule:
One major change is that the majority of the assembly tasks have been delegated to Kenny. The actual integration of the various mount components will occur at his residence. Due to this, we have adjusted the division of other tasks to accommodate.