Nov 30th weekly update

This past week was a short week due to Thanksgiving break however, we
accomplished much. On Monday and Tuesday this week we finished the
manufacturing and assembly for our most critical module. The manufacturing
included drilling holes in the side braces for the axles, cutting the belt
to the needed length and fastening the two ends together, cutting the motor
mount and attaching it to the side braces, and attaching the scoops to the
belt. The two ends of the belt are fastened together using staples, a
simple method that appears to be holding well enough for the purposes of
this project. The motor mount was made out of 1/16” thick steel and was
cut using the ban saw and then bent to a 90 degree angle using the metal
bender. The scoops are attached to the belt using epoxy and electrical
tape, another simple method that appears to be holding extremely well.

One of the important tasks that we accomplished this past week was the
mounting and coupling of the motor. The planetary gear box motor is mounted
near the top axle of the conveyor belt and is coupled to the axle using
3/8”OD and 1/4"ID plastic tubing. One of the problems we are encountering
with our motor is that one of the planetary gears inside the gear box is
too small. We will have to replace the gear in order to prevent jamming
during the competition.

For both aesthetics and the regulations of the competition, we wrapped both
of the side brackets with black electrical tape. The tape helps distinguish
the metal of the brackets from the other metal of the conveyor belt as well
as keeps the conveyor belt from scratching the inside of the slot on the
arena. Since a scratch on the arena leads to an immediate disqualification,
this was a very important step to take.

On Wednesday, we demonstrated our most critical module to our GSI. We
showed our module and its movement in the arena and consequently we feel
the presentation went very well.

Also this week we cut the wood for the conveyor’s support box. The rough
shapes of the bottom, sides, front and back of the box are all cut out and
are ready for further manufacturing. Since we need to make a few small,
exact cuts on both the bottom and front of the box, we have held off on
assembling the box until we have access to the laser cutter to make these
cuts. Once the cuts are made with the laser cutter, the box can be
assembled (we will use wood glue to assemble most of the box and some small
nails where appropriate).

This week we will try to finish all of our manufacturing. We have yet to
laser cut and assemble the support box, cut the sides of the chute, and
couple the second motor to the conveyor belt and attach it to the inside of
the support box. After the final machine is assembled, testing can begin.
We plan to test the machine as much as possible so we will know when small
adjustments need to be made. Also, like we said in last week’s blog, we
will need to continue to take photographs and videos of our progress to
include in the one minute long introduction video that will be played at
the competition.