Week of Nov 16th

This week we finished the scissor arm bases, drilled holes in our vertical supports, made our L shaped supports for the cart, cut holes in the cart top, and assembled most of our MCM.

We made the scissor arm base with the mill. The holes in the vertical supports and the in the L shaped supports for the cart were made on the drill press. The holes in the cart top were made on the laser cutter.

To assemble the MCM (the hopper plus scissor arms) we first threaded then glued the torsion springs to the velcro/spring steel flaps and attached them with kevlar thread and glue. We then wove the kevlar thread in X shapes around the hopper columns and cross pieces and glued the thread in place. We also screwed the scissor arm base to the top of the hopper. We then glued the column supports in the hopper top.

We then found out we put the spring flaps on the wrong way. Therefore, we carefully extracted the hopper supports from the hopper top and turned them 180 degrees. We also had to take the spring support off the smallest column to put it on the column that was previously empty. We found out that including the glue and kevlar thread the column supports were too wide to fit in the arena so we now have to shave down the width so that it will fit in the arena.

Next week, we will cut and drill the holes in the horizontal cart pieces since we traded for more square tube stock with Ram Rod. We will finish drilling the holes in the L shaped connectors and weave the kevlar around the column supports. We also need to drill the holes in the cart top for the lead screw.