What did I accomplish?
I framed the gantry into our wooden game board, I mounted a magnet to it, I designed and cut the housing for our scoreboard, and I iterated previous pocket designs and printed them all.
Am I on schedule or behind?
I feel a bit behind schedule, as we haven’t gotten around to testing as much as I would’ve liked, and tomorrow is our last push for complete integration.
What do I hope to complete in the next week?
I hope to finish the full integration, clean up any hacked-together solutions, and improve the robustness of fabrication. After that, I will begin working on two-axis gantry movement, as it’s currently confined to 1 axis.
As you’ve designed, implemented and debugged your project, what new tools or new knowledge did you find it necessary to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks? What learning strategies did you use to acquire this new knowledge?
Given how mechanically complex my project is, I have had to spend many hours using Fusion 360, a CAD software, to model my design. Then, I have spent time 3D printing, woodworking, and machining to make my model a reality. For CAD and 3D printing, I used LLMs and YouTube tutorials to learn how to design and debug. For woodworking and machining, I consulted the experts and TechSpark routinely, from high-level overviews to assess feasibility, to double-checking specific implementation details.