User:Stephen.eide/ENES-100/project 3

Week1 Activities
Tasks:
 * Draw 10 different mini golf designs in Autodesk Inventor.

Doing:

Downloaded Inventor for Students and used the basic tutorial files which come with Inventor for about 2 hours.

Of all the designs, I'd like to use one that would involve a motor in some way. The specifics need to be fleshed out as far as designing the obstacle around the motors. Sketch 8 would be the most interesting because it would allow for a fun hole-in-one shot while giving an option for bad players to simply go around the course to the hole.

Next Steps:
 * Work out specifics on how I would add the moving wall to Sketch 8. Present to teammates.
 * Learn how to add moving objects to Inventor to better illustrate my ideas.
 * Look for supplies to use for building a course.

Week2 Activities
Tasks:
 * Flesh out favorite golf hole ideas (materials needed, how mechanisms will work).

Doing: Of the 20 designs made by the team, we picked 2 of mine to flesh out: Sketch 8 and Sketch 10.

Sketch 8



Yellow wall (the door) moves vertically up and down.

Challenges:
 * Place motors out of danger of the player (player will not be able to hit mechanism with a golf ball.
 * Make sure the door only moves vertically
 * Decide on best motor choice

Place 2 motors, one for each side of the door, on top of the wall. Also place the Arduino on there. Motors attached to cord which pulls up door. Wall is slotted so the door can slide in and ride along the wall. Motors also allow for a slow lowering of the door on its way down.

Materials Needed:
 * At least 10' x 4' of green (or just play on carpet)
 * Motors (probably servos so once we won't need continuous rotation)
 * Saw to create the slot for the door to fit into.
 * 2x4s for the borders and maybe double stacked for the wall.

Sketch 10:

No machines to figure out. Hardest part will be the curved border

Materials Needed:
 * At least 7' x 5' of green (or just play on carpet)
 * 2x4s for borders
 * Saw to create a rough curve for ball to follow.

Next Steps:
 * Draw ideas in CAD software, especially the wall and the fitting slots.
 * Find servo motors for Sketch 8.
 * Build a rough demo of one of the 5 holes which were fleshed out.

Week3 Activities
Tasks:
 * Devise ways to deal with ramp lip problems
 * Determine how certain materials could be used for the Duncan the Dragon head.

Doing:

NOTE: THESE ARE POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS THAT MIGHT BE IN THE CURRENT DESIGN. These designs will be considered if Sean's current design does not play well during playtesting.

Tested different angles of incline for a golf ball shot up a ramp. Determined that that would be a major factor in causing the ball to lose speed unnecessarily.

Create slot in the bottom of the ramp. The Brown represents the first part of a ramp. The Blue represents a slot in the bottom of the ramp that the second part (Magenta) can fit into.

Cardboard:

Pros: Cons:
 * Easy to find
 * Easy to bend/shape
 * Not sturdy? (Testing to be done this coming week) (Solutions: Glue layers of cardboard together; A metal cage for the structure of the head)

Plastic: Can be modeled for the Makerbot and printed piece by piece, with interlocking pieces to keep them together. Can be painted later by hand.

Pros:
 * More detailed dragon head

Cons:
 * 3D printing time
 * Designing the interlocking pieces (how many pieces need to be spilt up? How big?)
 * Not sturdy?

For either design, need specifics on what is happening with the motor inside and how the dragon head should be designed around it (a hinge in the back of the head?) Also, serious testing needs to be done to figure out which material could take more damage.

Next Steps:
 * Create a ramp based on the dimensions of the original model
 * Test how the ball acts on that ramp
 * Adjust ramp accordingly, possibly changing the ramp to one of the new styles listed above
 * Discuss the dragon head materials with teammates
 * Design specifics of the motor in the dragon's head
 * Create/implement test for determining which material is strongest

Week4 Activities
Tasks:
 * Figure out who to talk to regarding how we can use Duncan the Dragon's head in the golf course
 * Figure out who to talk to about actually making the Duncan head

Doing:

While on Thanksgiving Break, I found the location of HCC's PR and Marketing office and the e-mail address of the executive director from the HCC website. I have volunteered to talk to them on behalf of the team. I'll check with Foerster on Monday, 12/1/14 to make sure that this is okay for me to do.

Facts that are important to bring up when talking to the executives:
 * The golf hole is going to be used to promote our engineering department
 * Reason for using the Duncan head is to promote not only the engineering department, but the whole school
 * Duncan head will be used as an obstacle that will be built sturdily and will provide an enjoyable and memorable putt putt experience
 * The innards of the Duncan head (bottom and top of mouth, inside of head) will be designed for function over appearance by the current team working on it (me and my group).
 * The aesthetic design (outside of the head, including the dragon snout and spikes) will probably be handled by some group in the Arts and Humanities department. Will ask for suggestions from the Marketing department, but right now, leaning on some theater people, since we are planning a presentation for them anyways (maybe some set designers?).
 * The project is (hopefully) going to be continued into next semester, so some of us in the group may not be involved in the final product, but we are trying to get everything organized.
 * This is going to be finished and put up for display at an event for the ASCE by March 2015

Of course, going to check this list with the instructor. I am probably missing some information that they will want. Will revise if more information is necessary to get approval from marketing.

Next Steps:
 * Talk to Foerster
 * Introduce idea to the Marketing department
 * Show presentation to the Theater department

Week5 Activities
Tasks:
 * Determine how far golf ball travels on different surfaces.
 * Suggest changes to course based on results of distance tests.

Doing:

Tests done earlier in week with teammates gave poor results. Too much room for error. Pipe causes ball to shoot out sideways sometimes. Distance traveled not consistent. Ignored some results completely for being very different from expected.

New test removes the pipe and uses a flat board to send ball down, getting rid of the issue of which direction the ball came out at. Also fixes the problems with the lips and rings inside the pipe, which are probably the cause of the inconsistent distances (ball hits them and goes slowly, or ball lands past the ring and goes quickly).

Ball is placed at the top of the ramp and travels down ramp. It continues on the flat surface until it comes to a complete stop. Distance is measured by measuring tape, which starts at the bottom of the ramp. Distances recorded start from the bottom of the ramp.

Ramp is placed at an angle of 8.8-degrees. This is achieved from the 24-in. flat board being propped on one side with a stack of wooden boards 3.625 in. high. The test was repeated 6 times.

Spreadsheet of results

Video of testing on carpet

Video of testing on a yoga mat

How the Course Is Affected By This Test: In the dragon's head, there are 3 pipes, with one of them leading to the hole-in-one. Test designed with 2 things in mind:


 * 1) Ways to get consistent speed/trajectory from a decline
 * 2) How much space is needed around the hole (should we move the hole to account for speed?)

Test gives an idea for an answer to question 2. Question 1 is answered, but would not fit well into the preconceived design. Option for question 1 is to replace all pipes with very small, flat declines.

Pros:
 * No ring to deal with, as opposed to the PVC pipe
 * No possible curve

Cons:
 * Redesign of structure under dragon head
 * More woodwork to do

Testing needs to be done with smaller pipes which fit more tightly around the ball. Also, pipe needs to be made smooth on inside.

Question 2: How much room is needed after the pipe and around the hole?

The ball travels very far after the end of the decline with just carpet. 97.5 in. was the shortest distance found. On the yoga mat, the shortest distance found was 50.25 in. Considerably shorter. Changing the surface the ball rolls on around the hole could be an option. Or maybe adding the different surfaces as obstacles earlier on in the course! Need to find out how fast the ball can be going while still being able to go in the hole, but it is almost definitely too fast to go in with how it's designed now. Simplest solution is to make the back of the hole (after the dragon head) larger by moving the back boundary farther away. Then we can move the hole back to where the ball is moving slow enough to go in.

Next Steps:
 * Find pipe with tighter fit. Modify test to use that instead of the ramp
 * Try different angles for the ramp/pipe
 * Ball will pop out of hole if going too fast. Find out how quickly the ball can be moving while still getting in the hole.