The Past Two Weeks: Designing Flurries: A MechE Report

The past two weeks were eventful for the MechEs of SeaPerch and MATE. Not only were ROV designs leaving the drawing board and coming to life on the building floor, but adjustments were made to teams as well.

SeaPerch

Last week, we had a meeting on Tuesday, November 28th. During this meeting, we took a test concerning topics such as buoyancy, stability, center of gravity, etc. These topics would need to be kept in mind while designing ROVs, so therefore, it was important to test our understanding of such subjects. The week prior to this, we were provided with a packet, a chapter from the Marine Tech textbook. This test consumed the entire meeting for most of the MechEs and we left the meeting in hopes that we had performed well. This test would help the coaches of the HMS SeaBots to determine whether we would be placed on the Middle School or Open team. (See prior blog post "What is SeaPerch).

During this week's meeting, December 5th, we completed our ROV designs either on paper or Tinkercad, and we began the building process. We were also aware that the SeaPerch teams would be posted the morning of the next day, December 6th. As many MechEs had already completed their designs, they proceeded to use their measurements to put PVC pipe together and build an ROV. After building the frame itself, our primary focus was to add enough floats to achieve neutral buoyancy with our ROV design.

The next day, all the members of SeaPerch rushed to the STEM room, eagerly anticipating the moment when they could view their teams. To respect the privacy of those on the list of teams, I will not disclose any names or teams without prior permission.

MATE

During last week's MATE meeting, we, the MechEs, spent the majority of our time designing our ROV frame, taking inspiration from the Vector frame depicted on the MATE website. We used a designing software called Tinkercad. This meeting was a crucial step forward our team's path to the competition, for the drawing table was where the most important decisions that would affect the performance of our ROV in the pool were made. The placement of our motors, our ballast, and the measurements for each individual piece were decided here. This designing process consumed the entire two hours dedicated to our meeting, and we used our time wisely.

This week's meeting of MATE, December 6th, was primarily our building stage. We had completed measurements (though we realized that we had made a few mistakes and corrected them as we built), and it was time to pull out our PVC cutters, pipe and connectors, and get to building. We built our base first, to check for sure if our deign met size requirements. We then cut PVC to the appropriate sizes first, then connected the pieces. We nearly completed the top frame as well. This meeting was extended two hours beyond usual as to provide us with more time to completed this crucial step. I predict that we shall complete the frame during our next meeting, and then we can proceed to verify our Tinkercad design with our real-life design. During this meeting, we also handed out our employee contracts to all of our company employees. We know that our responsible employees will all have them back to the CEOs by next weeks deadline! The Scout Team is growing and thriving and we are certainly on a path that will lead us to a great performance at the competition.