Today we worked on finishing our obs forms for Mr. Wilton. While Dr. Neat was teaching people to do html I arranged my homepages the way I want them to be.
Here is my Mr.Wilton ObsForm!Today we weny with Mr.Miller into the shop to lurn about the shop and what we will be doing there.
Today we started building a spaghetti bridge. We drew up some ideas and began to build it. the idea is to have an arc with some legs that help it be stable.
Today I went with the JPL invent croud to the shop to talk about tomorrows presentation and also to talk about this years JPL.
Today the JPL group gave a presentation about the last two years worth of JPL devises. I did most of the talking but Keilah and Nick ran the 2014 device, I ran the 2013 devise, and Kevin drove.
My activities today in engineering class were related too JPL invent. Chall. I got with our group of vets in fifth period and talked about the rules and different ideas we had for this year
and why or why they would not be useful/legal. I also created a powerpoint presentation that will be presented to the class on friday.
Today I went with Mr. Milller to the shop to learn measureing but because I already know how to do it and was very bored I was allowed to go finish welding the last three music stands.
I was able to finish all three and now must just paint them and send them back to the music room.
Today Keilah and I went outside to cut the wood for Ms. Marto's FLL tables. We were able to cut the pieces and then mark out where we need to rout ot so the hinges will fit flush.
Today I spent the period working on the FLL Tables we got a router bit from OSH and milled out the wholes for the hinges. We were only able to get two done and so we stayed after school and finished milling and began putting on the hinges and painting.
Today I came in at Lunch and we finished the tables with the help of Alvin, Eugene, Conner, Keilah, Sam, and I. Sam also helped me after school yesterday.
Here is the Invention Challenge powerpoint
Today we got with our spaghetti bridge group and created our final design and built two test bridges to test tomorrow.
Today we got with our spaghetti group and we tested our Bridges. The average score we got was 1.52. We felt that this was a good score and so we
wanted to make our final just like these bridges so we built one more test and a final so that the final would have time to dry.
Today we tested the one bridge and got almost the same score as before. We left our other one alone so that it could dry very well.
Today we had the competition for spaghetti bridges. I was in charge of handling all the bridges and adding water/weight to the bridge.
Our group was one of four in our class that was long enough and strong enough to hold any mass.
Today the JPL group got together and talked about Ideas for JPL with Bryan. We then chose some ideas we liked and split into to
Today the JPL group was excused from the WedChall found out that we are presenting Ideas to the class about JPL. all of us will be presenting our designs seperatly with
our own pictures so I started a CAD and will have pics of it in later posts.
Today the JPL group just got togrther and worked on our designs. Here is what I have finished so far.
Today we presented our ideas but halfway through the projecter had to cool down so some people had to present a drwing on the whiteboard
Today we found out our grades and they were not good lots of the JPL group was removed. Today I worked on finding a 7" tube for the barrel. I tried looking for molds for concrete that are tubuler. The closest thing to what we need that I have found is a 7.5" concrete form on homedepot.com.
After thinking about it with the others we think that we might do a sabot style launcher. A sabot is basically a casing that would go around the ball so that it would fit snug in the barrel.
Today we had the wednesday Challenge where we rolled a marbel. check the form in the wedchall section.
Today I worked on my website, thought about device ideas, and helped kevin with the polygon function on sketchup. we learned that the maximum number of sides is 1000.
Today most of the group was working on the warm up with Kevin on Sketchup so I did a little work on my website and thought about changing our idea to a spring or bungee type launcher. I will run it by the others and see what they think.
Today we were introduced to the end of the quarter wednesday challenge. We have to build a arch bridge and the way we win is by getting the highest ratio between span and the longest side of our building material. Kevin still has his bridge from last year and so we can spend the week on JPL we will just use the one from last year. I also talk with kevin about what he thought about changin our idea from an air cannon to a spring or bungee cannon.
Today after our meeting with neato Kevin and I started working to think about new ideas like the sabot style cannon but while trying to find something to buy as a prototype.
While looking for a device that does that we found a dog ball launcher that shoots tennis balls with a bungee connected to a stick so the ball stays still and is hit by the moving stick. Keilah owns one and said he will bring it tomorrow to test it. Here is a pic of that device.
Today I got to school at 6 o'clock to go to a field trip to the State of the District breakfast. This starte out a little interestingly when we almost lost a FLL table on the freeway and had to stop readjust and take surface streets the rest of the way. When we got to the venue we unpacked, setup, and then got to drive the robot around and show off. A few of the things we did included, gettng our breakfast with the robot, driving around with a muffin on the robot while we facetimed to a phone that was also on the robot, and make jokes about some guy in China who had his hand grafted to his ankle. When we got back to school I found out that Keilah couldn't find his launcher from home we arnt sure if we should try to go buy one or not they cost about $25 in store.
Today we had the Bridge competition. Kevin and I were one of the first groups done so I just talked with classmates about the ineffieciencies and design flaw when it comes too cambering tires. This is when someone tilts there tires outward in an effort to achieve a larger contact patch between the tire and road while turning. The problem is that it will wear down the tires faster because they will be riding on the thinner part of the tire also it prevents tires from being rotated properly every few months.
Today we talked about the quarter grades and the quarter wedchall results. lots of people were unhappy that Kevin, Alvin, and I reused Kevins bridge from last year. We did this to allow us to work on the Invenion challenge. we also found out that lots of people were again removed from JPL limitig it down to just Kevin, Nick, Sam , and I. I think that this could allow us to work more efectivly and efficiently just because there are less people in the way.
Today I talked with Dr.Neat and Kevin and Dr. Neat said we could go buy that ball launcher. with very little left to do with out a tes device I worked on my website for the rest of the day.
Today I brought in the launcher that I was able to buy last night from Bed, Bath and Beyond. it is a lot of fun to shoot so we tried to mount it to a vise and shoot it for a test.
Today the JPLers took our cannon thing out side and tested it first from five meters and got 18/29 shots made. Then we scalled it down to six feet which is the proper scale between the ball and distance from the target and we got 20/20 straight on and then 20/20 with one bounce before it went in. then the last few minutes we prepared for tomorrow when Mr. Wilton comes.
Today Mr. Wilton came to talk to us about JPL and we presented our progress so far to him. He told us that our tests from 5 meters was more accurate than our tests from six feet because scaling down the distance from thee target shoudnt be part of our tests. we set up a demo outside but while we were "aiming" the cannon we missed alot of shots. I think this had to do with not having a proper Site on the device and so our technique was just eye balling it. When everyone came out to whatch us we succesfully completed multiple shots only missing a few of them.
the JPL group worked on again testing the tennis ball launcher to see if it is a plauseable idea. we changed the way we mount the launcher to the vise so that it clamped around the barrel. this made it much more stable than before and after weighing it down and aiming it we made five shots in a row from 5 meters.
Today keilah and Alvin started making a stand for the launcher out of parts from the post office metal pile. Kevin s. continued to work on the CAD for the device, and the other JPLers took a much needed website day to update and fix our websites. This is a bit of a challenge trying to update a website and do JPL at the same time but if we dont do it Dr. Neat wouldn't know what we did/ are doing during class. also because this is a class we want to get a good grade and so maintaining our websites is vitaly important.
Today Keilah and Alvin continued to build a stand for our launcher out of post office metal while Kevin, Ian, and I worked on building a launcher out of cardboard tube and bungee. We started by finding two pieces of cardboard tube that fit closly inside each other but not tightly and cut the outer one down to 2' and the inner to 2'3". the inner tube we found already had two holes for the bungee to go thru so wonce the tubes were cut down to size we bungeed it and secured the bungee to the tube with ducktape.
Today was my first day back from my trip to Idaho. That was a little sad but im glad im back and can work on JPL againn. Apparently while i was gone there were some personality conflicts so todays main focus was to resolve those issues by talking about them in an open constructive manor. This helpeed our group become closer as a team and allowed us to understand each other a itlle bit more.
Today we had to shoot at the target so we used our old cardboard thing and tried to get as many points as possible. we ended up getting 20 points from just me eyeballing it and fireing but t took me like five test shots to get used to it. After our test shots we continued to work on marking/ drilling holes for the device. We hope to finish assembly on monday.
Today at lunch Kevin , Ian and I went up to OSH to get a 4"x4" but when we got there we found that they are under construction and have no lumber. So we got back and began drilling holes for the PVC pipes but it takes longer than expected so this will throw off our expected finish date alot. we decided that instead of just using a 4x4 we could just use two 2x4's but we didnt have time today to do that sothat will be for another day.
yesterday Alvin, my dad and I stayed after school so that I could drill the holes in the leading edge 4x4. I was able to finish the two holes for the bungee in the big block of 4x4. so todsy I started to make the back piece with two 2x4's that Alvin salvaged. We started by marking and drilling the PVC hole and that was all we could do today.
Today while most of the group worked on resizing the parts i set uup and drilled pilot holes for the trailing 2x4 set so that later we can drill bigger holes for bungee.
Today my dad didnt come down so we could not use biig tools but we spent the day assembling the device outside neatos front door. We finished everythng except the ball holders and the sight.
Today we shot our cannon and were able to make two shots aftr only one test shot to line it up. I think that this is very good considering it was held up by books and the ball was not held perfectly but it was sitting on a coffe can. After this test shooting we went int the shop and worked. I worked on drilling out the bungee holes to the proper size.
Today the JPL group went straight to work and first priority was to mount the ball holding pegs because we believe that that will dramaticly increasse our chances of success. After we got those mounted we switched from two seperate bungees to one long bungee to help even the power. also we practiced shooting at the eight.
Today we worked on practice firing the device(its really cool) and we discused wheather or not we should buy a sight or just go with what we got. also we comisioned alvin to find not crap wood from a store. after school he broought in the wood so now we can make device number 2.
Today we worked on marking and cutting the pieces for Franz the second launcher. that is pretty much it. we marked and cot the 4x4 and 2x4's.
Today I left school early and was not in fifth period.
Tooday I was absent due to my great grand mothers funneral.
Today is my birthday!! Today we found out that fourth period broke our device and so we spent the period repairing the ball holder so that it would work. We also talked about how to mount our device to the table kevin had an idea to use a board that had preset pieces of wood so we just set up and shoot.
Todayss main purpose was to practice setting up aand being able to make the first shot.we were very succesful and were getting about 80 points because we found out that we can consistantly hit the candle. we tested 3 times consitantly scoreing 80 points.
>Today Dr.neat challenged us to get 90 points. so the first thoing we did is try to find out if we could hit the candle with a bounce. we were able to find the sweet spot to do that so then we did the tests where we move evrything and reset it up. WE DID IT! We got 90 points 2 out of three trials! so we just continued to test.
Today we had a slight crisis where the ball holder had gotten adjusted and had stopped holding the ball so that was annoying. Then we had to present to the class and so we did two full trials both of which we failed the low goal shot bu made the other two. our score on both trials was 70 points. but once they were done we continued to test and fixed the problem so now we get 90 again.
Today was the JPL invention challenge so here is myrundown on what happened. While the rest of the group met at school because I liv e so far away I drove to augustis hawkins with my dad. When I got there I got a call from Keilah which I enturpreted as our device broke. So I proceeded to worry for about a half hour before everyone else gets there. I walked around to inspect the competition and I thought that our device would be able to beat our competitors if it was ooppporational. Then the group got there and i found that our device was fine so we registerd, setup and did a little practicing, then we just waited. When it came time to shooot we got setup in our place and then took our first shot which is when we found out that during setup we had broken the par that holds the ball to the front of the device rendering it unopperational. For the rest of the day we just played and blew off steam and enjoyed the food from the foodtruck. but we were really upset.
Today was our first day back from break and so the JPL group gave a rundown on what happpened at saerdays comp. Refrence th above post. Then we the JPL group worked on our websites. We also gave advice.
Today the JPL group worked on websites and advice fo the other group that made it to finals.
Today was the infamous E wedchall and I got to be a co judge this time with Kevn S. My main Job was distrubiting laptops with CAD and the once we collected the E's I took the deminsions of the actual E's and wrote them down so kevin could focus on saving all the CADs so that he could get the deminsions from the CADs.
Today we found out that because of the San bernardino shootings we can not go to JPL due to hiightened security. So we watched keilah work on the winning device and then worked o n our websites.
Today The JPLers are at JPL so we were stuck back at school so kevin released the E scores and then we worked on websites.
Today we found out that our Final is as always ... a suspension bridge. But this time it hass to go through the targets of the Jpl goal and can hold a ball fo a multiplier. Other than that the scoe system iss the same as JPL. When it comes to it the length and closness to construction will be the tie Breaker. So we got with our groups and I told my group that I have a pretty good Idea and so we started working on CAD and Powerpoint but DR. Neat wnts the non JPLers to do that so it is going slow.
Today we continue to work on The Final stuff and it continues to go slowly as all the others in my group want to sociolize rather than work. but we managed to get most of the ppowerpoint done minus the CAD pics.
Today the JPLers had to go and alk wwith drneat about the JPL invenntion challenge and Mr. Wilton was there. We talked about what we think went wrong Including: Time managment, Leadership conflicts, and the day from hell. I will go indepth into it here. It also turned out that my group did nothing today while i was gone so when we went to check on them I sat down and basically had to redo all of i because there was a major disconect between the cad and powerpoint and the Cad was severly flawed.
JPL one pagerToday at the begining I gave DR. Neat the powerpoint and then we got our bridge that we have to build it looks ell designed and like a winning bridge assuming that we get the materials.
Today we took the bottles we found yesterday and cut them down to size. Also due to health concerns we can no longer get trash from the trash cans and so now I dont know if we can get all the materials we will need. Also what looked good at first glance is starting to look flimsy and poorly designed. No one has Big enough boxes at home for us to use so......
We couldnt find big enought boxes so today we decided to scale down and go through the bottom goal. We started glueing our legs together in the same way they wanted us to but just shorter.
Today we Had our final bridge c hallenge and our bridge failed. it was held up by the goal so it failed but we had to modify it because we could not get enough cardboard to build it. We had to make it about four feet shorter in height and length, also we had to hold it up with counter weights because it wanted to fall in towards the middle.
