Most Critical Module Complete. All Engineering Done

Last week, we finished the manufacturing and assembly of our most critical module, the arm. The remaining pieces to be manufactured were the front plate and the PVC tube arm section. The front plate was water jetted out of a 1/16 in thick sheet of aluminum. The PVC arm section was made primarily using the band saw. Originally, we had planned to use the mill, however, we were told during manufacturing that since it was hollow, the mill would not be a good option as the PVC would move quite a bit during milling.

We made a slight change to our most critical module related to the fasteners. Instead of using the metal bolts we had planned to use to attach the front plate to the arm section, we used plastic fasteners instead. These are lighter and will hopefully allow our machine to operate better. We left one metal fastener where the PVC plug meets the PVC tube to insure that the arm stays together.

Also this week, we finished the engineering of the rest of our machine. In this up and coming week, we have quite a few things to get done. First, we need to cut out the base of our car. We plan on doing this on the water jet machine and manufacturing it out of a 1/2 in PVC plate. Next, we need to manufacture our pillow blocks. We have a total of 12 pillow blocks to manufacture. They will be manufactured out of 1/8 in L-stock. These will take the majority of our time this week. We also need to manufacture 2 axles. One will be for the front wheels and the other will be for the rear wheels. Due to a shortage in supplies, we had to design each axle slightly differently. the back will be a 1/4 in diameter aluminum rod while the other will be a 3/8 in diameter aluminum rod turned down to 1/4 for where it meets the bushings. After that manufacturing is complete, we need to hook up both of our motors to the rest of the system. We have one motor that will be connected to a worm gear box to run the arm and we plan of using a planetary gear box to move the car forward and backwards.

Here are a couple of Solid Works renderings of our completed design: