Final update

After a long exciting and fun year of stem engineering, my group (dubbed the C.I.A an acronym for the Capstone Investigation Association) have at last finished our capstone project. Enjoy. 

Intro: 

Every year the senior stem class partakes in senior engineering with the main focus to learn engineering skills and other stem related skills to then be placed into engineering a product that can better the lives of those around you. Our group reflecting upon ways to help others found helping our teachers and fellow students first would be of a high priority, due to this we created teh C.A.R the campus assistance robot to alleviate transportating materials by foot from class to class. We noticed lots of teachers would require students to sometimes transport materials to and fro the class. Also often teachers wouldn't be able to get drinks as they're swamped with work. This is when the C.A.R comes into place and allows us to transport such objects. 

Design process: 

We started with a Traxxas Big Foot remote control car, we wanted soemthing that could have a resonably high speed and torque to be able to carry the weight necessary as well as be cheap in price and reliable all of this supplied from Traxxas. Next we got to the design board and designed multiple variations of ways we could contain materials. With our design and thought process under way of what we wanted to build we first had to run some experiments and tests to make sure the car could handle what we build and if not, we would need to pivot. Next we made sketches finalized sketches and then 3d models created and lastly 3d printing of such materials. 

What we designed,

• Mounting system for draws, cup holder, adjustable cup holder and lastly the locking mechanism. 

Electrical: 

Next we would need to be able to see though a camera on the car to get insight as to where the car was driving without being able to see the car, after all the whole point is to stop teachers or students from leaving the classroom. With this we were loaned out a functioning camera system. 

Next we purchased a raspberry pie and an electronic lock and wifi receiver. With this we would be able to remotely open and close the lock mounted on the drawer system such that students out and about on campus won't be able to get inside. 

Suspension: 

• as the weight of the car continued to increase upon the weight designed for the suspension we noticed the car began to sag more and more and even did some tests finding how much weight we would be able to place on the car and have it still work. While our labs came back rather positive showing we could still run the suspension the horizontal sway movement was too much (a test we should have run) making for a necessary upgrade to the suspension with stiffer springs. 

At last, 

The car was finally finished, we built for a very low budget a campus assistance robot that could transport materials to a fro, remotely, about the campus and not impede upon learning or teaching time for the members of our school. 

Conclusion: 

I know you're not usually supposed to say you had fun at school cause that almost implies you weren't doing any work but I think this project might have been in the happy medium. I love building things and have current plans of going into mechanical engineering after high school so taking this class and getting to take that stepping stone into an engineers life was very cool and interesting to me. I loved designing and building everything here and enjoyed wrapping my head around design problems or ways to make such and such work with the constraints given it was very enjoyable I found. 

With that two things I did well at were being a conscientious learner, I didn't always know what I was doing but throughout I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about 3d modelling, printing and overall the design process in general, I used to think you could just get an idea and start tinkering away but through this project learned to take in time the steps of the deisgn proess to build something better. Secondly I did well as a critical thinking, I feel very happy that I was able to overcome obstacles and get some of our pieces of the project working by trying out multiple things and thinking hard design wise. 

Two things I don't think I did well was being a communicator and being culturally competent. I lacked in being a communicator since I've been turning in all my work late and should really work on that and secondly as being culturally competent since I didn;t take the needed steps in the design process and made a huge cup holder which cost a lot of 3d filament. Through this I've learned to be careful with what I design and use as it can have effects on other people such as taking away their resources as well as just being generally not clever designs that can have more time put into them allowing for more saving of resources.