Author: ajohara

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week, I focused on finishing up the design review slides and preparing for the design review presentation, since I was the designated presenter for our group this week. I helped out mostly on restructuring the use case and design requirements to make sure they were more tightly coupled and working on my presentation skills. I also helped out with finalizing our BOM and submitting purchase orders, since getting all our purchase orders in was our group’s main goal for this week. I also worked on finishing up the CAD for the enclosure, which mainly included finalizing all the dimensions and spacings so that we’re hopefully able to start and finish manufacturing everything next week.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

I’d say that my progress is on schedule with our original Gantt chart we made. According to that schedule, I was supposed to finish up the CAD this week and manufacture everything next week, and these tasks line up with what I did last week and what I’m planning to do this upcoming week. 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

This next week, my main focuses will be manufacturing (laser cutting) and assembling the entire enclosure, as well as working on completing the design review report.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

This week, I focused on helping generate our bill of materials, CAD up our entire design in Solidworks, and create our design presentation. 

We realized last week that it was in our best interest to finalize our design implementation and features earlier than later, so we made the goal of trying to compile our entire bill of materials by the end of this week. I helped out with picking components for the structural build, as well as speccing out the motors/motor drivers, speaker, proximity sensor, and power supplies, and deciding where to source them from. We have all our components picked out, but we need to figure out extra quantities + shipping costs and everything before we can start submitting purchase requests. 

I also focused on getting the CAD design for our vending machine enclosure finished. In the original Gantt chart, I had initially given myself two weeks to do this, but I felt that it would be safer if I finished a little earlier to give up more time with manufacturing + assembly in case something went wrong. I got Solidworks working and finalized most of the spacing + dimensions, as shown in the picture below, in a way that conformed to the requirements we had set (but also tweaked a little for the design review). I still have to add some small things like slits in the walls to help with joining pieces together during assembly. Depending on the feedback we get from the design review, I might also change some stuff, but overall, I have a fair amount of confidence that we might be able to start manufacturing next week. 

I also helped out with creating our design presentation this week. I spent some time redefining the use case and design requirements to reference each other a little better, since we got a lot of feedback on that from our proposal presentation. 

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress is pretty on task with the Gantt chart we created, if not a little ahead, since I was able to get most of the CAD finished earlier than I expected. 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

During this week, I’m going to focus on finalizing all the CAD + structural dimensions and hopefully begin laser cutting everything, since we’re planning on sourcing most of our enclosure material from Techspark. I’m also going to plan on helping out with getting our BOM finalized and begin submitting our purchase orders. Hopefully both of these things will be finished by the end of this week. I might also spend some time focusing on practicing my presentation, since I will be presenting the design review. 

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

This week, I helped with finishing up the project proposal + slides, as well and finalizing some of the features of our project. I spent some time splitting up the project into feasible tasks for our Gantt chart and making sure that our slides included all the details required. 

I also began compiling a series of links to resources /tutorials/previous projects that I thought would be helpful in referencing when implementing some of our features + interfacing our peripherals with the RPi, since we all have pretty limited experience with using the RPi environment. I also helped out with organizing our bill of materials and coming up with an outline of the components + quantities we’ll need to look into purchasing. 

I also worked on getting Solidworks updated and installed on my computer so that I’m able to get started with the CADing up the enclosure next week. I came up with a brief diagram that outlines the general spacing + locations of all the components we’re planning to use for the vending machine, although there are some specifics related to dimensions that might change/get added depending on how everything lines up in CAD. 

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

My progress is on task with the schedule on the Gantt chart we came up with. I’ve finished a rough diagram/plan of the parts that I’m hoping to start CADing up this week, although I’m still currently in the process of installing Solidworks on my computer, as of today. The installation process is taking a little longer than I expected, since I have an outdated version of Solidworks currently installed on my laptop that I have to backup and uninstall first. I hope to finish this process up later tonight, or by tomorrow (Sunday 2/9) latest. 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

During this next week, I’m hoping to ideally finish CADing up all of the components needed for the vending machine structure in Solidworks. I’m hoping to get all the parts finished/assembled in CAD and use this as a first draft/pass, so that we can at least get an idea of the spacing constraints and amount of material we’ll want to use for the build. I’m also hoping to re-familiarize myself with using Solidworks beforehand, as well as the process needed to generate drawings and send them to the laser cutter, in an attempt to make the manufacturing and assembly process as smooth as possible.