Capstone Project Update #4

evidence of work

In these past couple of weeks, we have been hitting the home stretch of our capstone project. Our presentation night is just over a week away and we are very scared, yet excited! Recently, we've been working on our prototype a lot, as well as completing some more assignments for the research part of this project. In the next week, we plan to detach the electronics systems from the MacBook so it can instead receive power from batteries. Also, if we have time, we plan to add a button to the system so that you can easily increase or decrease the pressure. Below are our recent prototypes and documents that we've been working on!

detailed experiment, tests, plan, and set-up

expriment set-up

This is our plan for the experiments we conducted where we talk about why we want to conduct these experiments.

Additional Funding Presentation

additional funding presentation

We presented this to the STEM board to give them an update on our product; we did not need any additional funding!

experiment report

This report includes our procedures and results for the experiments we ran.

content

stepper motor -

electrical motor that rotates in a series of small angular steps instead of constantly
we are using a stepper motor to reel in the lace in our product, so when you hit the compress or decompress button once, it should reel in or reel out one step

life cycle assessment -

process of evaluating the effects of a product on the environment over time
used by major companies and corporations to show what their products are made of, how long it will last, and how it will affect the environment

SimScale -

an engineering software that allows for simulation of all kinds - thermal, element analysis, and fluid dynamics
we have been practicing simulating on SimScale to get a hang of the software, and we hope to be able to simulate our own electronic components after our presentation night

reflection

The past few weeks in class have been very productive and we have worked well together as a team. I am proud of the progress we've made on our prototype and we are so close to the finish line!

One thing we have been doing well lately is thinking critically. Our most recent accomplishment is getting the motor to spin both ways, which we had to research and work on a lot. We have had to think deeply about how our product will actually work and how to make it more convenient for the user. We are planning to disconnect it from the MacBook and attach it to batteries and a button to make it more practical.

On the other hand, we continue to struggle with time management. We only have around a week left and there is a lot left to do. I think we can remedy this problem by getting together after school and working on the project, hopefully with our mentor. I wish we would have actually started working on it sooner than we did.

Page updated

Report abuse