Break It Apart Challenge: Take 1

Evidence of Work:

For this project, we were tasked with bringing in an object in order to disassemble it. For my object, I brought a toy remote control that has two joysticks that are limited to only up and down movement. The next step was to open up our object and document the components and systems within. My object was relatively simple to open since the two outer shells of the controller were held together using 7 screws. Once open, we drew a rough engineering sketch. This gave a basic idea of what the object looked like and where each part goes within the system. Once we opened our object, sketched it, labeled the sketch, and made a flow chart displaying the flow of energy; we were tasked with coming up with remaining questions about our object. Such questions included, "What do the symbols on the chip mean?" and, "Why does one end of the white wire not connect to anything?" Below I have attached my rough engineering sketches that are not to scale. 

Content:

• Conceptual Sketches: 

  • Shows the connections in an object (elements and their relationships)

  • Labels on all parts

  • Understandable for anyone who picks it up even if they aren't an engineer or scientist

• Flow Chart:

  • A way to show the flow of energy when one action is done on a system

  • Can be used for a subsystem of a larger object 

    • Ex: Pressing your foot down on the gas of your car is a different system than turning your turn signal on

  • Makes it easy to tell what goes wrong in a machine when you can track each step of it to the flow chart

• Technical Drawing:

  • What an engineer uses in a blueprint or other conceptual drawing in order to display it in its most accurate form

  • A projection of the object its representing (3D to 2D)

  • Can be a perspective drawing, isometric drawing, or an orthographic drawing (most common in engineering)

  • Everything is labeled, measured, and set to a scale that is in proportion to the object that is being drawn

• Perspective Drawing:

  • Shows the human perspective of an object

  • Has a point where all lines converge and seem to disappear

    • Called the vanishing point

• Isometric Drawing:

  • The three axes of it form 120 degree angle with each other 

  • All lines have another line that are parallel to it

• Orthographic Drawing:

  • Shows different viewing angles of an object

    • Ex: Front view, side view, top view

  • The multiple perspectives make a clearer picture of the object and its components

Reflection: 

As this was our first project of the year, it was a relatively simple task that was aimed at introducing us to the idea of conceptual and technical drawings. This is an important concept since we will use it throughout the year in the senior engineering capstone project. I feel that I did a good job picking out an object that was simple enough for me to understand what is going on, but at the same time, the object had some complex electronic parts including a chip and buttons that sent a signal to a wireless receiver. If I were to do it better, I would find what the remote goes to in order to analyze how wireless signals work. Another thing I excelled in was time management. This project went by in a very fast amount of time since this is only the first component of it, but I was able to manage almost all of my time efficiently. Classroom time is very important to manage well since outside of the classroom, I don't have Mr. Tronconi availible as a resource. If I were to improve on this, I feel as if I could have utilized his help more since there were multiple points where I could have needed his assistance and/or guidance.