21: Tuesday, May 20

Today was our last day to work on our project. We finalized the mechanical components of our project – we mounted our back and front wheels, finished our Ackermann steering mechanism, and finished the overall design by joining our parts. The focus of our class today was finishing our car design. 

During the process of our project, we worked with a number of different aspects of engineering. Not only did we learn how to use a number of new printers (like the resin printer, the Ultimaker 3D printer, and the Voltera circuit board printer), but we also broadened our understanding of different types of engineering, specifically electrical and mechanical. Mechanically, we built our RC car. We furthered our understanding and approach to using software like Fusion. We also learned how to make a car that uses Ackermann steering. Electrically, we learned how to make, construct, and print our own circuit board with Voltera and PCB. Using software like KiCad, we learned how to make our own circuit electronically. With the Voltera printer, we printed out the Voltera Punk Console as well as our own circuit board for our car. With the Voltera, we ran into issues with soldering pins, so we decided to shift to circuit boards, where we wired our own board with a physical breadboard. Using the skills we learned last term in Electrical Engineering, we wired our circuit board and soldered those wires and pieces in. Additionally, our car functioned electrically with the breadboard wiring. However, it did not fully work with the circuit board; so if we were given more time, we would have tested our solder on the circuit board with a Voltmeter. We learned a lot from this process. We encountered a lot of obstacles along the way. But, in the end, we are proud of how much we learned during this term.