T-minus five days until SEED is over and yet it feels so far away. This week we have made major progress towards our final prototype; however, we also have faced numerous challenges.

We started off this week laser cutting all of the wooden pieces for the chair and sliding board chamber. Before actually cutting, we modified the Illustrator files so each piece notched perfectly together. Since I’m the person on the team with the most experience in this area, I took the lead in getting all these pieces together.

But here’s where we hit our first roadblock. After gathering all our materials, we discovered that the cutting-edge, tried-and-true, very expensive Epilog Fusion Laser Cutter could not cut through 1/2″ plywood. This was a major disappointment, but our team found an effective (albeit time-consuming) solution. I laser cut the wood as far as it would go, then used a Dremel to sand the notches down further. The extra time and stress was worth the smooth connections of our chair.

Base of the sliding board feat. burnt/sanded notches

Earlier this week, Kalen also took lead to sew the cushion for our seat. We used a 1/4″ piece of wood for the base and sewed a vinyl covering around some foam. The cushion will be attached with Velcro for easy removal.

Our high quality cushion

Also, with a bit of imagination, we successfully completed the foot rests. We took the crutches we had purchased last week and sawed off the telescoping tubing. We then put the tubing through a hole drilled into 5″ x 7″ plywood and secured with a pin. Now all that is left is to secure it to the top of the scissor track.

With the chair well on its way to completion, we decided to finalize all of our Solidworks drawings for machining the crank mechanism. However, we hit a second roadblock that left us all feeling very anxious. After researching for hours and placing an ordering a week ago, our team was notified that the gears we had chosen would not arrive until July 30th, two days after the end of the internship.

The gears were this team’s Achilles heel. If there are no gears, the scissor lift can’t move and our team would be left hopeless. After talking to our instructors and TA, we realized that there were two viable solutions. We could either machine the gears ourselves (adding even more hours to our project time) or purchase a different set of gears that somewhat, kind of, relatively worked.

We opted for the latter solution. So, with our gears ordered and hopefully on the way, we moved on to modifying our Solidworks models for the new material dimensions. Sure, this challenge greatly changes parts of our design, but the engineering design process is never perfectly smooth. And after all, these challenges only make the final product that much more satisfying.

Until next week,

‘Started From The Bottom’ Team Picture (7/17- 7/21)