It's a Wrap! A Reflection of A Successful Prototype

Today we will present our project alongside every other team in Professor Sullivan's Design Lab I class.  As a team, we are eager to display our crane as well as see what other groups have created.  We decided as a group that this project was worthy of a reflection.

We have learned many things from this project, such as valuable teamwork and problem-solving skills.  Although it was not noted in our blog posts, every time the group met, all members were in attendance.  We made it a point to schedule our meetings around each other's schedule.  Our most popular meeting time was Monday's at 1PM in Lydon Library. This time worked out well in the developmental stages, however as progress was made and parts were fabricated, we began meeting at shorter intervals to assemble our crane in Bourgeois Hall.  We did this so group members would not have to carry parts of the project around campus. We were fortunate to all have this time free between classes.  Our blog posts were created withing a day or two of each meeting, ensuring we kept our readers well informed of the progress.

In terms of the workload, we did not divide up different parts of the project to work on individually.  Each week we would set a task for us each to attempt to complete, and then meet the next week to compare designs and ideas.  For example, when designing the parts to be 3D Printed, each group member came up with his own designs and then at our next scheduled meeting we would compare and come to a consensus on which design we liked best for each part.  The same can be said for the coding.

Towards the end of the project, where coding was focused upon the most, we ran into what appeared to be major issues at the time.  At first, we had separate codes for each motor.  When attempting to combine the code, we were prompted with many errors.  Neither Lucas, Billy, nor Jon had any previous coding experience, raising the level of difficulty in debugging the program.   Prior to fixing this coding issue and while assembling the crane itself, we encountered another issue.  The DC motor did not provide enough torque to raise our small weight.  As noted previously, we almost changed our project to a wrecking ball, as the servo provided enough torque to swing the boom as needed.  Coming down to the final days, with no time to fabricate a new reel for a second servo to be used, we improvised.  We used a second servo with a Popsicle stick extension that would rotate around the Z-axis.  The string to our crane would be attached to the Popsicle stick, thus raising and lowering the weight when rotated. 

Although our project is not exactly like our original idea in that it isn't autonomous, we believe we improved the design.  We have full control over our crane's actions and this project was a major accomplishment for our group!  This project was exciting to work on, as we were applying our knowledge from class to create a finished product. 

We guess one could say...Our Crane... is INSANE!