Imagine this is the most ingenious title ever

Yesterday we and our device once again undertook the long and arduous trek traversing two levels of carpet, wood, metal, and whatever other materials are present in the floors of the engineering hall, that we might make yet another pilgrimage to the imperfect representation of that which we we will encounter on the first of December - with twofold purpose. Having completed the second half of our device over the weekend, we wished test the soundness of its design on a surface more with a coefficient of friction more closely akin to that of the hardwood flooring of the Chiles center than the hyper-traction of the carpet in the halls. After having determined that our device worked satisfactorily, albeit still requiring a few minute changes involving balsa wood, elmers glue, and threadlock (the threadlock was for the hex screw binding the axle to the gear from which it derives its motion), we once more entered the concrete lab to unveil our device for the second time in the presence of three judges, upon whose shoulders rests the decision of which device deserves to be called "most ingenious". How did it go? Relatively well, I think (and therefore am). Our device performed mostly as expected. We did encounter a few traction issues which we believe are largely due to the amount of dust from the floor which affixed itself to the rubber of our tires, lowering their coefficient of friction. But far from criticizing our device for these shortcomings, the judges provided us with suggestions to remedy this problem, which we have already implemented and which included positioning the battery further toward the back so as to place more weight on the tires and sanding rough lines into the otherwise-very-slick tagboard portion of our secondary device. We now consider our device complete, and will focus all efforts on practice. So in all respects, I would consider this presentation of our device to have been a success. But if asked to predict our changes of winning, I would give it as a percentage equal to the square root of -1 (much as I would like it to be e^i(pi) x 10^2)). In other words, the only thing certain here is uncertainty (along with death and taxes but neither are relevant to the topic at hand). And yes Osterberg, getting at least one point is also close in there too.

Out of Beta, Releasing On Time

At last, another one of the moments for which we have all been waiting has arrived (I suppose I could just use the normal past tense here since it arrived on Friday, but where's the fun in that?). For those of you who have not shared our (or at least my, for I cannot fully speak for my teammates in this regard) eager anticipation of, or have even dreaded the coming of this day, I am speaking of the arrival of Beta Test Day. On this day, we took what our considered-to-be-complete device down to the practice room on the first floor of Engineering Hall for evaluation. However, after close examination by Rick and Sandy, it turned out that we were almost right. Our device had nearly no problems, with the exception of the wheels. In an irritating-but-somewhat-ironic continuation of the saga of the uneven motors, one wheel was still not pulling its weight. But this time it was not the fault of the motor. The wheel was turning properly, but found it difficult to convert its rotational momentum into forward momentum the device due to a lack of contact with the ground. After a few discussions with Rick, we pinpointed the source of this problems and were able to fix it, moving the wheels as far inward as possible and placing cardboard shims underneath the working motor so as to raise it to the same level as the nonfunctional wheel. We also were advised to change the course which our antenna followed from the receiver to the vertical tube holding it aloft, so as to avoid pinching and breaking that thin wire which is the only communication link between our device and the rest of the outside word (at least that part of the outside world which consists of our remote control). But all in all, I would consider it to be a successful Beta test (although as I have pointed out to a few people, if we are going with the software release cycle a better analogy might be the Release Candidate. This would be something which is supposed to have no errors and be ready for production, but which you are examining one more time to ensure error free operation - which appears to be the suggested state of a device at "beta test" But I digress into semantic discussions (and if I engaging in such a discussion about computer security products it would be a symantec discussion - hilarious I know) and nested parentheses) - we were able to move five sandbags into our endzone in one pass. We had a little difficulty gaining enough traction to push them, but between the improvements to the wheels and the additional grip associated with a floor not covered in millions of minute particles, we should not have such difficulties on competition day. We also have another part to our device which was not present at beta test, but upon which we have been working tirelessly (or should I say worked tirelessly, for we have basically completed said labor) over the weekend to create for the second time (version 1.0 was found unacceptable for reasons which I am not at liberty to discuss at the present moment). We will unveil this portion on Tuesday at 3:10 when we present our device to a panel of unbiased judges in competition for the prestigious award of "most ingenious device". We know not what will be our chances of victory in this or any of the four categories, but this is certain: they will be dramatically improved simply by virtue of our and failure to give up before the competition commences - which perhaps is not a failure at all.

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It's been a while since my last update, for which I apologize. And in that time, so much has happened. Our device is nearing completion, as is our *censored* - I must repeat my earlier encouragements to "wait and see" what the final state of our design is. We have encountered many obstacles, but we are overcoming them. The end of last week drew to a close the months-long battle for equality among motors, about which I suppose I should provide some background. In our first parts order, we requested a second motor, but upon assembling and attaching the two motors (Murphy ensured that we did not fully realize this until after they had been screwed onto our base and the wheels temporarily attached) we found that there was a basic inequity of speed between the two motors. We had heard of the need for differential, but this was ridiculous (and one sided, so it would only work turning one direction, making our device act like those cheap rc cars whose steering consists of "it drives straight going forward and turns right going in reverse"). So we tried to resolve the problem first by exchanging the defective motor for a new one. Which we did. Again. And again. And yet again. Until it seemed that our goal was more to demonstrate the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over while expecting the same result, for those of you who don't know) than to pick up and stack sandbags. Finally, after realizing the futility of our current endeavors, we brought our motors downstairs to Sandy, and finally came to realization of the true nature of the problem. It seems that we had received one 6 volt motor and one 4.5 volt motor - which has the nasty (from our point of view) effect of causing the motors to run at speeds inversely proportional to their voltages. We enjoyed the greater speed of the 4.5 volt motor, so we exchanged our 6 volt motor for a 4.5 volt motor. Everything seemed to be going great. But then came the soldering workshop, during which (in addition to learning just how many different ways a soldering iron can cause significant and permanent bodily harm that would make CA glue or a bandsaw look like nothing) we discovered that while the 4.5 volt motors may appear to work better, in using them one risks a catastrophic failure at any moment as the motors finally lose patience at being overworked and quit. Which if our friend (?) Murphy has anything to say about it, will happen right in the middle of the competition, and replacement will entail dismantling 3/4 of the device. So on Tuesday, we reverted back to 6 volt motors, in the process providing yet another example of Kearney's Law ("Do everything twice", origin unsure, but evident in examples too numerous to list here despite the lack of a known disk space limit and the near-ubiquity of high-speed internet access among my readers - I guess what I really mean to say is that I can't remember them all and don't feel like digressing further to list those which I can recall). But we now have a functional base and are nearing completion on the accessories. We have met twice already this week and have a few more meetings scheduled in hopes of meeing our self-imposed deadline of this Sunday. Which is perhaps not an entirely realistic deadline, but useful nonetheless. For as long as we are shooting for that deadline, even if we miss it, we are pretty much guaranteed to make the real deadline of next Friday. Perhaps this is not an ideal method, as it does hold the potential to encourage one to take deadlines slightly less seriously. But at the same time, I think it is better to set an early deadline and miss it by a little than to focus on the actual deadline and barely make it. Which manifests itself in my work habits. If I have a medium to large paper due (and by large I mean somewhere between around 10 pages - this probably won't apply to my thesis paper), I tend to stay up half the night working on it. But that half the night isn't the night before it is due. It is usually a few days before. I offer as Exhibit A (or I would, if this were a trial, in which case I would possibly be guilty, although of what I'm not quite sure) my design paper. I assembled the charts and diagrams in the week or so before it was due. But when it came to the actual writing, I started at about 9:00 the Friday before it was due (yes, you did read the day of the week correctly), took a break at 10 to go see a movie, then upon my return created a self imposed deadline of Saturday morning to have the paper finished. I was up until almost 4 that morning, but I completed the paper. Now the technique which I have just described may not work for everyone. It does not always work for me - there are some papers which I have begun one night, realized that I'm not going to finish, and put off until the next day. But if you're the type of person who works better under a deadline, or who does things better at one go, this might work for you. And the beauty of it is that, just as I described in the sentence before last, you keep your options open. If you end up encountering writers block or things just somehow do not work out, you can obey the instructions on printed on the casing of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ("Don't Panic" for those of you who have been deprived of this excellent series). You still have a few more days in which to repeat your endeavors. And if you do finish the assignment, you have over a day to examine it from the perspective of the mind at noon and replace any symptoms of the occasionally-incoherent-yet-incredbily-insightful mind-after-midnight. Which is another advantage of this technique for creative writing - I find that my best ideas come roughly between the hours of 11 pm and 1 am. Which is an interesting observation on the workings of the human mind. But such a digression shall not occur at this point, and anyway is better suited to a philosophy journal. I have satisfied my goal for this post: To provide the reader with another peek into the internal workings of our progression towards the December 1 design competition. And managed to transition, inadvertently yet seamlessly, into a discussion of my study habbits and their implications towards others. And I hereby declare this post completed, with title amended.

(If only blogger would actually parse my php code - and if only it was all actually valid.)
UPDATE: And it did - but not in the way I had intended. Pretend that there's no space before of the first question mark in the title.

And now the moment I've been hinting at

In at least one of my previous posts, perhaps more (but no more than three) I have hinted at an upcoming post on my team's ideas for our device for the Freshman Design Competition. Well, this...isn't it. I am sorry to disappoint you, loyal readers, but I cannot allow the mission-critical secrecy of our design to become public knowledge at this point. However, the process by which we have been designing is far from secret. My team so far has been managing to remain within the recommended time periods. Today is the date on which the midterm reports are to be turned in. While that event is in the future for me, the limit of the tense will approach the past as the number of minutes left in this day approaches zero. So I will make the statement that I turned in my paper today (known true for all time after 4:00 PM). Anyway, semantics about tense aside, the significance of that event is that our design concept has been temporarily finalized. To explain that apparent contradiction, that is the design which we will attempt to build, but all bets are off as to what will happen once we enter the testing/debugging stage, which should begin shortly after fall break. This finalization also meant that were able to build begin to build with at least a modicum of confidence. And so we did, beginning yesterday afternoon. We didn't get extremely far, but we do now have two wheels on a platform with all the related electronic paraphernalia such as receivers and speed controls. We are currently experiencing some issues with our speed control, but otherwise construction seems to be going well. Already though, we have made a few changes regarding the orientation and positioning of components. Fortunately, I modeled our initial design concept using SketchUP (the last letter isn't supposed to be capitalized, but it seemed too opportune a typo to fix), a task that required additional effort at first but proved invaluable in the creation of our report (it is much easier to rotate a 3d model than to manually draw multiple sketches). So changes to our design plan should be simply a matter of dragging components. But I digress - my point is that we have no need to fear small changed in design. We know what we are trying to build. Only time will tell what the final product will look like. Insofar as the classified nature of our work permits, I will keep you updated on our progress toward that final goal.

Balsa Has Been Framed

Well, yesterday (for me - I'm writing this on Wednesday but this won't be published until Friday afternoon when everyone's had a chance to test and I don't have to risk influencing people for better or worse. Perhaps I should say Tuesday) we broke our balsa wood frame, the culmination of a process that had begun a few days earlier. Sunday afternoon, we met in that room high in the corner of the Engineering building - 317 - that room which, if our teachers are to be believed, we will be considering our home by the end of the semester. But for now, it still felt like a bit of a vacation into another world - a world full of excitement, but also a world of danger - where else (except maybe Australia, where they say you are never more than 6 feet from something that can kill you) can you glue your eye shut, inadvertently make a permanently attached accessory of a piece of balsa wood, and eliminate unneeded digits - all without walking more than a few paces (excluding trips to the hospital afterwards) . Fortunately for us, construction went relatively smoothly. As you can see in the photo below, our frame consisted of an outer triangle frame, and reinforcing pieces within. On Sunday, in about 1 1/2 hours, we constructed the outer frame and added the major structural triangles (the ones made of the fat balsa wood). Considering that a fair accomplishment for the day, and requiring time for the glue to cure before adding a second layer, we left the lab and the fumes of CA that never seem to completely vent even with the windows completely open. But the next day we were back for more. This time, we used the remainder of our thick balsa wood to create the triple-thick stiffening triangle which would transfer the majority of the force from the block in the center outward to the side supports of the Satec frame. We used the thin pieces of balsa wood to add additional reinforcement, and placed leftover scraps of balsa over critical butt joints as gussetts. Then we were done - with the construction. I might have wanted to take the frame down to the lab, test it, and end the suspense, but we had to wait at least an hour for the glue to cure, and if you're going to wait that long, you might as well wait the full 24 hours. So Tuesday, right after our classes ended, we took our frame down to the lab and prepared for the worst, hoping to get at least 50 lbs. Imagine our surprise when the numbers passed 50 and kept clicking upward into the triple digits. The experience itself is impossible to describe - the report says that it took almost 4 minutes but it felt like less than a minute - a minute of incredible tension, the beating of my heart fighting for attention with the sound of balsa wood straining and threatening to crack. We thought that it was over at around 140, when the glue joints holding our top beam popped and left the center bar in a v-configuration. But by that time the pressure was enough to keep the top from falling off, and the numbers kept clicking up - 150...200...300, at which point the top of our frame was starting to slant to the side. But it still kept holding until 319.9 lbs, at which point the top bent off to the side and the pressure dropped to the mid 100's and the test was declared finished with a final amount of 319.9 lbs - they tell us it's the highest the school has ever seen. I still can't believe it - none of us had any building experience before. We went into this completely blind, and about halfway through the building we stopped calculating the sizes things should be and started just measuring them by appearance, then cutting and sanding them to fit. All I can think of is that it was a combination of our triple-thick bracing (which kept the taller single-triangle design from folding to the side) and the fact that our butt joints were all done at 45-degree angles rather than the right-angles usually used. But overall, it was a fun project, and I guess now I feel a little more comfortable going into the rest of the design competition knowing that we were able to at least build one thing, however small and simple it may have been. The design project seems rather far off still, although we are pretty much down to our final design decision, with the only remaining decision being about the details of the steering. I'll try to write a more detailed post about that process soon, as I promised in my first post (but right now test tips were more interesting and more pressing to get out while it was still talk like a pirate day)
So, we're celebrating our success, but of course, there's the possibility that someone may come along and beat us yet. We're crossing our fingers, but if someone does manage to do that, I congratulate them as well. I also congratulate Section B as a whole, who so far is maintaining an average of over 100 - Great Job everyone! And seeing as I'll know the final results shortly after I publish this, I'll update with the final results when I know them.
Until next time...

The Initial Structure Before the Crunch


Starting to Feel The Squeeze

"You Look Like You've Been Through A Satec"

Note the main breakage point at top left. If you look closely you can see how the wood started to splinter as the top tipped sideways. The most obvious damage - the separated joint at the top left, was the one that occurred in the mid 100's - that portion seems to have been superflous to the structural integrity of the frame.
These images have been scaled down in consideration for people's download times. You can see them in full resolution in the Pilot's Ponderings Photo Gallery

UPDATE: I have been informed that the results are in, and our record stands. Congrats also to all of Section B on achieving the highest class average - 106.80 lbs, and to everyone else who participated. Now on to the design competition.