Week 6 Update

There is that part of the race where you get really tired, but you are more then half way done which, leads you to go really slowly.  That is what this week was for us, at least in tangible results.  While we did complete our first draft of our design proposal, we did not get the kite built.

In the first half of this week, digital models of the new connectors needed for the new design were created so that they could then be printed.  Figure 1 shows the 67-degree connectors that connect the vertical rods from the first design to the new diagonal rods in the second design.  Figure 2 shows the new front connector of the kite.  This piece is the same as the front connector for the first design, but now has two more points of connection for the two diagonal supports.  After designing the pieces, two of the 67-degree connectors needed to be printed and one of the front connectors was needed.

Figure 1 - 67-Degree Connector

Figure 2 - Redesigned Front Connector For Diagonal Supports

After designing the pieces on Autodesk Inventor Professional, the two 67-degree connectors were easily printed.  These simple pieces, as apposed to the new front connector, had very few places that could fail, such as overhangs.  The redesigned front connector was more complicated to print, though, because of the odd angles and because all of the connecting pieces did not share the same plane.  Due to the very low availability of the 3-D printers at the Innovation Studio, we decided to print the piece on Daniel's personal computer, which eventually did print it successfully.  Figure 3 below shows the piece just after the print finished, which is still connected to the support structure, and Figure 4 shows the piece without support structure.

Figure 3 - 3-D Printed New Front Connector with Support Structure

Figure 4 - 3-D Printed New Front Connector

Other than printing the pieces, we worked on the final report for the rest of the week, since the pieces were not printed until today.  We feel that we have a good draft to start with for the final report.  A link to the first draft is available here.

Starting from the beginning of Week 7, we have to hit the ground running.  This is now the third week that building the kite and outfitting it with nylon are our focuses.  The issues with the 3-D printers this week set us back one week, so now we are scrambling to finish.  We would like to focus on the actual presentation soon, along with practicing kite flying until one of us gets comfortable, so that we are able to have a cool demonstration as part of our presentation by the end of the week.  Week 6 was the last week we had on our initial schedule for the construction of the kite, but we feel that even though this is not complete we can easily get back on schedule.  Over the next week we also plan to complete the digital drawings of the kite frame. We do not expect to have any issues in the next week as well, so we will most likely stay only one week behind schedule or even get back onto schedule.