User:Mongrest/Project1

Project Preference

 * 1) autonomous power wheel
 * 2) makerbot pla material
 * 3) autonomous power wheel

Problem Statement
my group will be working on the autonomous power wheel. the overall goal of this project it to make the power wheel provided, be completely autonomous and be able to navigate away from obstacles. we will be working on the design step

Project Plan
our plan is to perfect the steering mechanism and have a functional gas pedal system

Week 1 Narrative
Ok so first thing we decided to do is try out the steering mechanism that was designed by the previous group. what we did was to hook up the in room power supply (because all of the 12v batteries that were available were completely dead)to the arduino motor shield and noticed that the mechanism did not turn but we could hear the motor trying to turn every 6 seconds. this told us that the programming was working b/c the delay in the program was 6 seconds.

upon inspection of the motor unit it seemed that the gear part was jammed on the bumper that the previous group designed. the next step involved me unscrewing the mechanism from the plywood and then proceeded to take apart the mechanism to better understand how to get it to function properly. i had to unscrew 3 golden looking 8mm hex bolts to be able to remove the gear part from the motor. i then placed it in the vice and used a hammer to un-jam the gear. i then reassembled it and talked with my other group members ideas on how to prevent it from getting stuck again. we concluded that we have to extend the bumpers so that they wont get stuck in the slot where the gear slides again.

Week 3 Narrative
this week's goal was to reattach the steering mechanism to the wood frame using different system other than wood screws.

The reason for a necessary change in the way the mechanism was secured on the wood frame was because if the mechanism got jammed again, it would be nearly impossible to get all 3 screws out. I learned that the first time i had to take it off. I did some searching in the workshop room to see if there were any hex bolts that would fit through the holes in the steering mechanism. the reason for hex bolts is because a wrench is the easiest thing to use if the mechanism ever got jammed again. I also realized that there were threads on the mechanism itself where the original screws went, so i tried to find bolts that would screw into the mechanism threads. I did not find any in the workshop so i looked at home in our garage and brought in various types of bolts to test. the one i found was not a hex bolt, but a screw that required an allen wrench. this was ok because we have allen wrenches easily accessible and the head of the screw would be on the other side of the wood where there is a lot of room the use an allen wrench. I then had the drill the holes. since i could not find any calipers i found the drill bit size by eye and matching it ti the diameter of the bolt. It took about 3 tries but it worked. i drilled the hole were the previous screws went in because they were already aligned for the mechanism. turns out the were not aligned 100%. So to fix this i deformed the holes a little bit so that the bolts will go into the threads propperly. i then added a washer to each bolt the tightened them and reattached the frame to the power wheel