Solar and Hydrogen Vehicle Project

Throughout this project, I collaborated with my fellow tablemates, namely Joseph Ficarra, Kobe Chen, and Kaito Suzuki, whose positions from left to right can be seen in the top image on the left. The objective of this project was to design a machine utilizing VEX parts that incorporated various arrangements of solar and hydrogen cells. However, before we started building, we needed the approval of a final sketch by Mr. McGarrah, which was the best one out of the eight sketches created by all of our team members. Once we got our final sketch approved, we had to start building as soon as possible. Me and Kobe were the primary builders of this project. We tried to build our machine according to how our sketch looked, but we realized the sketch itself was flawed and did not account for some of the issues that arose during production. We had to take down and rebuild different parts of our machine, sometimes starting from scratch multiple times. One of the most noticeable and biggest changes we made to the project was taking out the two back wheels and replacing them with one small rubber tire and two simple plastic wheels. This helped reduce friction and weight significantly while not making us change the overall design of our project too much. Our final design's (in the image shown on the left) main simple machine was the chain and sprocket system that connected to two different axles. One axle was connected to the motor and had one sprocket on it. And the other axle was the one that went through the main big wheel and also had a sprocket on it. The chain connected both sprockets, which was how the motor was able to make the wheel spin. We placed the breadboard in the middle of the main base plate because it was the most practical place to attach it given that it was very easy to remove and all the wires would easily attach to it without being tangled. The breadboard had barriers on each side of the plate so that the breadboard would not shift or fall off. Just like we added barriers to the breadboard, we also had to add barriers to the two hydrogen cells so that they would not fall off as well or spill water when the machine moved. We spaced the breadboard, the hydrogen cells, the wheels, and all the other components out so that the weight would be balanced as evenly as possible. As for the wheels, the configuration of our wheels is a bit unconventional for a machine designed to carry weight. Our driver wheel is connected to the axle that’s being driven by the motor. As mentioned earlier, we used two tiny plastic wheels so that they would not have any friction while still having the strength to keep the entire machine balanced. This machine's wheel configuration resembles that of a tricycle, but in our case, the engine is in the front. But alongside the building, challenges came during the time of testing and selecting the solar and hydrogen cells. We had to try different configurations of solar and hydrogen cells and measure the power each time to see which configuration would be best for powering our vehicle. But then we also had to see which configuration would be the easiest to fit our machine without adding too much extra weight or being too hard to charge. In the end, we determined that using two hydrogen fuel cells in a parallel circuit was the best configuration in terms of energy and weight. We decided to test our machine to see how far it would go after setting up the cells, only for it to barely move an inch. In the end, we were left disappointed that our machine did not perform as we had hoped. Possible causes for our failure could be that there was too much resistance in the axle connecting to the motor and too little torque to overcome it. When evaluating why this could have happened, we agreed that the root cause of our failure was a faulty motor that we used in our machine itself, as the axle was bending through the base plate since we attached it to the motor. Despite our failure, we made sure our machine worked every time to the best of its abilities. Once completed, we presented our completed hydrogen-powered machine (bottom image on the left) to the class and submitted our comprehensive project documentation to Mr. McGarrah for grading. Although we were left unsatisfied since we did not achieve the desired success of our machine, we were proud of the skills and experience we acquired throughout the development of the project and the effort put in as well.