This week, the team focused on finalizing the design report document (attached to this post). This also drove us to polish some of our designs and plans for the next few weeks.
A byproduct of this work is that we finalized our testing strategy by writing down a step-by-step spec for each test that we plan to conduct.
Additionally, we received the majority of our project’s order for parts, and we started assembling/inspecting internals for some parts. This includes the 3D printer gantry (which is being assembled), the water kettle (which we took apart in order to modify the circuit for custom controls), the water pump (which we tested with a DC power supply), and others. We noted that varying the amount of current supplied to the pump proportionately affected the flow rate. We will have to do further testing to determine exact relation between the two.
The biggest challenge possibly coming up is with integration of off-the-shelf components. From what we’ve looked at so far, there are no major indicators that anything wouldn’t work, but we will not be sure of this until we’ve reached full system integration. To mitigate this risk, we plan on doing as much assembly work as possible this coming week such that, if anything doesn’t work, we can order replacements.
Schedule is currently on track.
Design report: Team_A1_Knupp_Govea_Pacheco_proposal