Weekly Progress

WEEK 1 

(April 1, 2014) 

We found our group and started talking about which project to do. We ended up deciding to do the planter manufacturing project. We will be working on this for the next nine weeks. More information to come.

(April 5, 2014)

Meet up outside of class to discuss how to compose a list of stakeholders, needs, and specifications. Also, watched the clip from required reading and discussed what we read.

WEEK 2

(April 8, 2014)

Added onto composing stakeholders, specifications, and needs list. Looked at older senior design project reports to get an idea of what they did last year and the previous years. Discussed stakeholders, needs, and specifications with another group in class. Emailed Bill Bernhard, the Senior design project leader for this year about meeting up and learning more about the current design and how it is supposed work.

(April 9, 2014)

We met up and started working on and comparing the 12 concepts that are due in week three, and began taking the team management survey. We also started making a classification tree.

WEEK 3

(April 10, 2014)
We were informed of a mistake regarding the project assignments and were re-assigned to the weeder project.

(April 20, 2014)

We completed the pairwise decision matrix and concluded that some features needed in the designs were more important than others. These are:

WEEK 4

(April 22, 2014)
Met up with senior design project group and heard their thoughts on the product. Went to the art store to buy supplies including brass rods, copper wire and broomsticks.

WEEK 5

(April 29, 2014)

Today we worked on finishing up the design proposal and editing last minute changes. We planned when we could all to go to the Machine Shop and decided on April 30th.

(April 30, 2014)
Started to work on building the weeder with supplies bought at the art store.

Slit Edge for Copper Wire

(May 2, 2014)

Today we went to the Machine Shop to continue working on the prototype.

Drilling Holes Into The Spikes

Finished First Prototype

WEEK 6
(May 6, 2014)
Discussed prototype with senior design group about what we can work and improve our design. Also converted blog posts into blog pages. Plan to meet up later this week to test the prototype in a real world environment. Ordered some parts so that we can complete a better prototype soon.

WEEK 7

(May 12, 2014)
Met up as a team to test out the prototype on a slope a Drexel Park. After testing, we came to a group decision of welding the teeth together to prevent it from twisting. This is needed because the rods twist on the weeder causing it to not work any more.

WEEK 8

(May 19, 2014)
This week we ordered many of the parts for our final design. These parts included steel rods and hose clamps. We already had most of the other parts like the broom handle from past prototypes. The steel rods toke longer than necessary to come in though so we could not work on the weeder until the end of the week. We started our final design and had many improvements. Since we had experience making it we were able to make it much quicker this time. We finished in about an hour and a half. The new weeder has a much simpler design including hose clamps instead of copper wire.

Prototype #2