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Robotic Assembly Line Class Challenge!

The Challenge: Build an assembly line out of Fischertechnik parts. The assembly will be based on marking the sides of 6  individual dice.

Plan of Attack: My partner, Tom, and I decided that the best way to approach this situation was to make a system based off of a converyer belt, and having the marking device powered by pneumatics. It looked a little like this:


Achievment Get!
Total Achievments: 15

Class Achievments
"Implementation"
The entire class had to work together on this one. Despite some setbacks, and some faulty programing, we got it done. Only downside, it took around 6 weeks and we only got through 4 cubes.
"Stewardship"
Took a while, but we got it done. I did my part, but I wasn't a huge contributor. That credit goes to Nicky and Tom, who spent a good week reorganzing all the parts.

Team Achievments

"Flash of Inspiration"
 FLASH. AAAAHHH. SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyIIYerdlUA
On a serious note:

"If you Build It..."
Built it. Such a beautiful piece of building blocks, sensors, motors, and pistons.

"Proof is in the Pudding"
After some work, we got it to fit both the needs of the part in front of us and behind us. The part in front of us took the longest to fit in with ours.
"Round and Round We Go"
Our first problem was trying to get ours to fit the machine behind us. Worked this out by adding an angle and just letting the dice simply dropping onto our coonveyer belt.

"Round and Round We Go... Again"
Next challenge! The hardest part of this entire project was the final part: getting the cubes packed. It orginally would get 1 out of 4 dice up, every other time it would fall down its conveyer belt and hit ours. This backed ours up, causing our timed programing to get thrown off. In the end, we commandeered this project (got a little backlash out of this).

"No Soliciting"
At one point, our station was having cubes getting caught on the light sensor. All we needed to do was slide the sensor over a little so it wouldn't catch the cubes. After a brief check, we made sure that  this implementation worked, and also checked for any other defects in our design.

"Lab Rat"

What we have here is data for the entire assembly line. Our station was station 6. We collected the amount of time it takes for each station to mark its die. The class used this data to figure out the total time it took for each die.

"Show Me"

 (Chart courtesy of Tom. The numbers refer to the stations in the previous table, and the charft shows how much time each station took compared to the others.)

"Leave no Trace"
I don't see any fischertechnik pieces here. Whatever could you be talking about? Oh, that project? Its gone now, you just missed it.

Individual Achievments

"Share It"
I was always asking the station after us to fix their design. The cubes kept falling down their conveyer belt and blocking up ours. After a while, Tom and I just jumped into their project to fix it, mainly because we were annoyed by the amount of progress they had made on fixing the problem (0%) and their tendency to be off task,.

"Keep the Customer in Mind"
I'll leave this up to you to decide how easy this is for you to read.

"Nice One!"

Marcos was the most helpful member to our project, always telling us when something was going wrong with our station, or where we might need to improve our design.

"Helping Hand"

I helped Gustavo with some programming for his station. He was having a bit of trouble finding the right functions, and couldn't figure out why the timing was always off. Fixed a few kinks here and there, and we determined the timing was off due to the change in light.

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Ping Pong Ball Launcher

Yep, the final exam for engineering was a ping pong ball launcher. Here's some quick statistics of my catapault:

It came as a surprise to me that the ideal range was between 90 - 70 degrees for distance. What I also have to consider about this project is that the launcher itself depends on tension. Its possible to stick a bar in the ball holder to increase the tension even more, gaining more distance at 90 degrees. The tests for the graph were done at the bar at the second notch. Here's a visual of what I'm talking about:

Well, a successful end to a fun year in engineering. See you next year! ಠ_ಠ

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Egg Drop Challenge - Iteration #1

Total # of Achievments Earned: 17

Achievments

Brainstorming:
-Create a sketch of one possible solution. Include labels.
-Create a sketch of another possible solution. Include labels.
-Create a sketch of a third possible solution. Include labels.

Material Size:
-Your materials fit inside a shoe box
Our materials were a pool noodle cut to about a little under a foot, and plastic grocery bags. It was pretty easy to fit into a shoe box, but there was no way that the materials was going to fit into a cigar box.

Material Weight:
-Your materials weigh less than 50 grams.
The total weight of our entire project was 31.4 grams. It easily assed the 50 gram mark, but just barily missed the 25 gram achievment.

Drop Accuracy:
-You hit inside the first ring!

The pool noodle worked pretty well when it was launched vertically, but not as well as when dropped horizontally. We also realized that the parachutes led to decreased accuracy, mainly because of the way the bag opened.

Egg Resilience:
-Your egg cracked but the yolk stayed inside and intact.

Our first drop was horizontally. We thought that the styrofoam would hold the egg intact, but it didn't work out to well. It would have bee nbetter to drop it vertically the first time, because the egg was inside of the center of the pool noodle, and would have avoided the majority of the impact.

Best Designs

The best designs in the class was  two bowls duct taped together with cotton balls smashed into it, and a bag of popcorn cooked and with ballons on top. The idea of using cotton balls to cushion the egg would definetly help our design, provding the egg with more shock resistance from the impact. We could also replace the plastic bags with ballons to create a softer fall, thus increasing the survivibility of our egg, allowing us to get more achievments.

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Glider Challenge: Design Phase

1). The challenge of this projecet was to create a glider out of balsa wood and tissue paper. This glider had to be able to glide as far as possible, and be able to beat other gliders in distance. A simple yet fun challenge.

2). Brainstorming solutions:
     - create a glider that is basically a giant sheet of tissue paper, with balsa wood supporting its wings and forming fins for air direction

     - a traditional plaen shape, with the wings seperated to the tail fin with a strip of balsa wood



3). The materials we are allowed to use are a piece of tissue paper and several strips of balsa wood. The Criteria of this project is to be able to make a glider that can go a certain amount of distance and be aloft for as long as possible.

4).

5).

Testing Phase

Unfortuantely, I wasn't here for the testing phase, so I really have no idea what went through my groups minds. Apperently, my group's initial testing turned out pretty well, and the glider was going a decent distance. When I came back on Tuesday, the nose was slightly ripped and David was gluing it back to the balsa wood.

Goals

My goals for this project was to create a glider design that would be able to float further than any other plane that we faced.

The End (of the world) Results

Our glider did amazing! Our group beat the crap out of the other gliders! And the way it flew into that tree...

Yeah, our glider flew into a tree. Great job person who is not Michael and did not launch the plane into a tree! Oh well, I'm pretty confident that our glider could have gone farther if the tree wasn't there, or if we had aimed in a different direction.

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Machine Control: Capstone Project

Well, its finished! Took a while, but it has finally come to a conclusion. The marble sorter was easily one of the more challenging projects we have had inside of this class so far. No, bot because of the creative thinking and problem solving we have to use to choose what to do. It was the limited resources that we had that killed me on this one. Pneumatics was easily the biggest contributing factor to this project, but there was not enough tubing and solenoids for everyone. So some people were able to aquire 1 3solonoids, another 10, and that was about all the solenoids in the class. So without pneumatics, this project got a little harder. Motors don't act as fast as the pistons do, and presented a bit of a challenge. Eventually, I was forced to redesign the entire assembly to support only motors and the one pneumatics piston I could grab. So I worked as hard as I could for the last week, but only successfully completed a marble sorter that can sort metal and wood with only two marbles allowed to load at a time.

Brainstorming
I never was entirely good at this. Brainstorming is one of the aspects of projects that I simply skip. Why? You don't really know how something works until you really try it, and that time you spent working out the little kinks and details could or could not have been for nothing. In a sense, brainstorming feels like a gamble to me. The most I feel that really needs to be thought about is: your materials available, the problem that needs solving, and how much time you have. Often, the time aspect leads me to ditch every bit of brainstorming opportunity and quickly assembling what comes off the top of my head. Unfortunately, this same technique used for essay writing doesn't work the same as it does in building. I would have greatly befitted from some brainstorming, and would have probably been able to create a fully functioning project.
Design Modifications
The final design was eventually changed, not because of programming or time issues, but due to the limited supply of parts. The key to this project was the use of the pneumatics, which allowed for quick release of the marbles and pushed them into bins. Motors could push the marbles into bins, but not act effectively as gates. Unfortunately, the use of pneumatics was limited to a few people due to the amount of pneumatic parts we had. So, instead of having a track system that would stay underneath the pneumatic pistons, I decided to make a wheel like design. A gear would move in a circle and hit limit switches, and depending on the type of glass marble, it would stop when the assigned switch was hit. For example (and in less confusing terms), if the green marble is detected, it would be knocked into the bin and would continue around the circuit until the second switch was hit.

Final Design

Reflection
The group I was in did okay. We probably could have had a bit more cooperation, but that can't be helped right now. Overall, the "final solution" didn't work out as expected, and could only successfully sort the wood and metal marbles. The programming for the colored marble sorter didn't really get anywhere past the developmental and test stages, and had to be scraped. So, a couple of things I learned here: brainstorm after you grab all the parts you need, be VERY quick to adapt to the situation, and make heavy use of your partner.

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Sorry the blog post isn't out yet! Just need to add the pictures and it'll be good.

In the mean time...

listen to this song, from a pretty awesome series called Superjail!
Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pycOxUNJMA8&feature=related

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Opt In Post:
Gamification


Here are the a couple of questions that could be asked on the video in the "Gamification" opt in post.

1. How has Facebook and other social networking sites affected your schedule and habits? How has it changed your taste in products and games?

2. Do achievements affect the way you play on game consoles? Do you pay any attention to what achievements you earn? If so, why?

3. How would you react to a world that monitors your every action and rewards you based off your behavior? Would you change at all, or would you continue your life the way it is? What could be some rewards?