Personal Reflection:
Reflecting on the process of creating the Chocolate Cookie Topper, I learned a lot. Not only was I able to contribute my own ideas and skills, but I was also able to learn a lot from my group members. As I am not too familiar with coding in general, I had to push myself to learn more about it. It was very helpful to learn from my group members about coding and overall expand my knowledge in this area. As we were brainstorming our solution, we ran into a few problems. We wanted to make a new and creative solution, while also ensuring that it would work efficiently. A huge factor throughout this project was time management. From this project, I was able to learn how to properly plan out my time and achieve specific goals. It was so important to manage our time and strategize how to meet the deadlines while trying to successfully build a solution for the cookie factories. In our group, we all had different strengths. I believe that I was able to still contribute in all of the different aspects, however, I feel that I can do better on the coding aspect of it. I believe that by continuing to learn and my knowledge of coding, I will be to do better in this aspect. Because of this, we were all able to learn from each other and take different approaches to the project. Overall, this allowed us to integrate our different perspectives into the project and successfully design, build, and create a chocolate cookie topper for the cookie factories.
Learning Target:
For the 3.1.7 Machine Control Design project, we were tasked with many different requirements. In this one project, we had to brainstorm, design, build, create, and code for a specific client and user project we were assigned with. Our group was assigned with the Chocolate Cookie Topper. With this, we needed to apply our abilities to create a viable and efficient solution for our task. In order to do this, we learned how to brainstorm and integrate our ideas together as a team. Another crucial skill that we had to learn was time management. In this project, we had a strict schedule to follow in order to meet our deadlines for the project. We learned how to plan out when, who, and how we would achieve a specific goal. One of the ways we did this, was by using a GANTT chart. Throughout this process, we were really able to learn how to efficiently work, communicate, build, code, and execute our solution together. The learning target was to learn how to work in a group together, while also effectively building, coding, and creating a viable and working solution.
Project Objective:
The objective of this project was to design an efficient and proper machine that will drop chocolate on a peanut butter cookie. In this machine, there must be a mechanism that will first move the cookie to a station where it will be topped by the chocolate chip cookie. In order to top the cookie with chocolate chips, a chocolate chip dispenser may be added. Once the cookie is topped with chocolate, it must be moved to a section of finished cookies. While creating this machine, it must be built through the use of a majority of VEX V5 materials. The machine must work efficiently, use VEX block coding, properly run, and successfully meet the needs of the client. The clients of our machine will primarily be cookie factories. In this specific situation, the client and the end user are the same. We were tasked to design and create this chocolate cookie topper for cookie factories, our client, and the end user. In order to meet and fully understand the project objective, we created a design brief. Our design brief is shown below. In the design brief, we included the client, end user, problem statement, design statement, and the criteria and constraints. We needed to be able to meet the criteria of quality, regulation, and proper order to meet the project objective.
