PLTW Engineering Notebook
Here are the pages from my PLTW engineering notebook. These show my design process and how I came up with the ideas, plus what designs actually made it into the final build.
Evaluation
-Prototype Results
-Reflect on the overall project and the skills you applied throughout it
-Reflect on the engineering concepts learned so far this year
- Our robot was a vending machine that would dispense an option of 3 items, and required the user to pay a dollar before. It also took toll of how much money would be collected in total, so that we could know how much total was made. It had 3 conveyor belts that could dispense small items out the front.
- We could have added a coin return, or a dollar acceptor which would improve the usage of our project from a customer standpoint. Adding these things would make it much more customer friendly, and not our obvious cash grab. It makes more sense for a normal vending machine and not some boot-leg dispenser.
- I think our machine was much more successful, and overall way cooler. That’s my personal opinion though, of course I’m biased to my baby, because I have never seen something like this made before. There were a bunch of robots, and the ideas presented by the PLTW website, but ours was truly the only original idea. AND the only idea that would make anyone money. (That is, if I can keep this… AND I REALLY DO! PLEASE MRS. BEHR LET ME KEEP IT) (Sorry for the caps my finger slipped…)
- The most challenging part was getting the coin slot to work, which meant making sure only quarters worked, and that it would hit the limit switch as much as possible without failure. There were other tough jobs such as switching the motors to go a certain distance, because sometimes they would not go the right amount depending on the level of battery. Because batteries are different, sometimes they spun too far, or not enough. However this was not at all compared to the difficulty of getting the coins to work.
-Reflect on the overall project and the skills you applied throughout it
- I believe I collaborated very well with my group, they built pretty much exactly what I expected to see. Our teamwork was well, considering we were able to throw it all together quite quickly. The only problem was that when it came to who did what, I ended up making the code, and difficult parts of the machine. (the coin slot) and I probably did 60-70% of the total work. Jake S did 25-15% and Tomi did 15-5% of the total project.
- My time management could have been better, I came in a couple seminars to work on it (without my group) to keep us on track with finishing. I’m definetly going to help my group on their part when I’m unable to do anything until they’re done. (I did do this after about 30 minutes of waiting and talking)
- I think I did very well on this project, I truly love it and how it works. I think I did well enough with the building, some things could be built better. When working in a group, I believe I carried… I instructed them what to do, how to do it, and when we needed things done. I tried to get them involved as much as possible besides just going on my own. I tried to be more like a leader rather than a tyrant and direct things exactly as I say. I’m not entirely sure how it would go when it comes to me with a group with another strong-minded person like I am. I am very stubborn and I try to stay open minded, luckily Jake and Tomi were letting me take control for the most part, but I made sure I added as much input, ideas, and help from them into our final project.
-Reflect on the engineering concepts learned so far this year
- I was able to apply all the coding abilities I learned this year, which basically was everything. It really was fun, and when it finally worked. THE most satisfying thing in the world honestly. I was also able to apply my knowledge from when I was a kid. I used to build LEGO vending machines. (Much harder to work, they had no electronics so figuring out everything was much more difficult then) and I applied that, which ended up resulting in a much easier project than any LEGO I had built. (These lego things included the function of the coin slot) This was a bit off topic but leadership skills.
- I found that the most difficult concept is remembering the engineering notebook. I don’t usually think to write down everything I do, this was new to me and my brain doesn’t like it. However, I think I did alright in the end, however I don’t think I recorded everything perfectly.
- I did not have to do any research on concepts throughout this project, I had everything pretty much nailed besides the engineering notebook. And possibly the engineering portfolio.