Week 6

     This week was midterm week for many of our other classes, so we chose to work on things individually and did not meet together very often as a group. On Monday we presented our mid-semester presentation and then watched and reviewed the other five groups. This session was treated like a "design review" and allowed feedback from other groups on the planned designs. The mid-semester packet containing Deliverables 1-4 and a second peer evaluation were also due.
     We met as a group on Tuesday night and clarified what our next steps will be. Before we can finalize what method we will use and create detailed designs, we need to complete our shakedown tests. We emailed the tech adviser to see when Bourns Lab was open, as we wanted to get pull profiles on the elastic bands that we bought (the force for each is not specified). Once this was done, we could finish constructing our shakedown model, test the two and compare the results, and then move forward.

Our elastic bands are only categorized as ambiguous things, like "extra heavy" or "medium."

     Our adviser let us know what days the lab was open and two team members went to try to use the tensile testing machine (Isaac and Max). However, they found out upon arriving that specific paperwork is needed to operate the machines, and as such, they were not permitted to continue. Because of this, our shakedown testing has been delayed another week and we hope to use the machine during class time with our professor present.

Our team was not permitted to use the machines in Bourns Lab.

     A mathematical "model" was also constructed this week. It was created in Excel and models the shakedown devices we created (or is roughly the size of an arm). This includes different angles, forces, positions, and moments. The preliminary results can be seen below.

     Finally, we researched the topic further and also each worked on our ethical paper assignment (the draft). This included choosing an engineering failure pertinent to our field of study, analyzing why the failure occurred, identifying ethical issues, and then getting someone else from the class to peer review and edit the paper before submission.