Hindered but not Stopped - Update 4, Spring Week 1

Well, this quarter's not starting out in the most ideal of situations. With COVID19 running rampant and all of our team members sent home, you might be asking how we will continue our project. We asked ourselves the same thing. But, refusing to produce nothing, we've come up with a game plan this coming quarter to ensure some progress, albeit less than expected, in the project. It's true we don't have the necessary materials/tools to make a robust prototype and do excessive failure testing, but there is still some room to make some prototype. That part is for a little later though. First we'll explain how this quarter is roughly planned out!

Reflecting on something we could do remotely, we immediately thought of the documentation, which all lives in online files. Well, what about documentation? Further introspecting, we remembered how difficult it was for us to sift through all the material(s) of previous years to find relevant info. Data on what worked, and what didn't was all there, but the process to find it was very roundabout. Thus, our first, remote goal of this quarter is to create a streamlined document, a guide/crash course, for next year's team to ensure smooth handoff of the project. So the hours spent looking for information like technical specs can better be used designing and making prototypes, something we fell behind on in winter. To reduce the density of our guide, we resolved to film some short segments, because a video is more engaging than reading blocks of text. Our outline of the guide is here: shorturl.at/myIW2

We plan to have that documentation completed by the midterm mark, so we can quickly switch our focus to available prototypes and testing. Some team members have hand and power tools and thus can possibly make wooden prototypes. Mainly, we will outsource one prototype to a 3D printer vendor. Regardless, we have a new, working Bill of Materials. Though we are all apart, there is still hope to come up with some project! The second half of the quarter will ideally be solely focused on this build and test. Any interesting results we find will surely be added to the guide.

That's all for now. In these trying times, we're glad to have found a way to forge ahead with our project. Every little difference counts, and if that means we're simply passing the baton to the next team, then so be it. We'll continue proudly!

​- Structures Team