PERSONAL Accomplishments
- Design Report (13hr): The design report was a large undertaking for this week, taking up most of our time in mandatory sessions and outside of class. Most of this time was spent writing a full description of the gantry system, discussing some design trade-offs evaluated for this subsystem, outlining test strategies, and writing various other sections. This took more time than expected due to the more professional language required for the report, as well as the need to develop some diagrams and tables to show our design. One of these diagrams will be shown in the next section.
- Pulley System Design (2hr): As I evaluated the plan for the gantry system, I settled on a design for the pulley setup.
The design uses two step motors and two timing belts, which move the electromagnet along the X and Y axes. The pulley system design, while more complicated, avoids having a motor on the central beam. This increases the working range of the gantry system while also reducing the size of the horizontal bar.
3. Gathering Necessary Screws, Nuts, and Washers (3hr): In order to assemble the gantry system, a specific arrangement of screws, nuts, washers, and brackets were needed. I went through the process of gathering all of these components to ensure that all elements were ready to assemble. This will fully enable the building of the gantry system design.
Progress
As was expected, the design report took a lot of time. As such, I was unable to finish the assembly of the gantry system before spring break. I will work throughout this week to ensure that the gantry system gets assembled and testing can begin. This will put me back on schedule for the rest of the semester.
Next Week Tasks & Goals
- Assemble entire gantry system outside of the box.
- Test basic movements (from point A to point B) for consistent accuracy
- Start (and hopefully finish) the design for our chessboard