For the conclusion of this semester, the greatest contributions I had for this project was mainly to construct the safety cage that will surround the RC benchmark propeller and motor testing apparatuses. Additionally, I chiefly spearheaded the task of designing the new overall frame design for the Y6 drone that we will hopefully construct in the Spring Semester. For the construction of the safety cage, whose idea was originally conceived in Blog Post 3 was my task. In this post, we discussed how we would take the existing makeshift safety cage that was constructed for previous uses of the test equipment and would instead construct a much more robust and concrete version of this cage using modular tubing found that was in high supply in “The Cave”. As discussed in Blog Post 4 I also focused on more specifically the hinge configuration and construction that would be used for the access gates for this new and improved safety cage. the previous iteration was very crude and did not have full coverage of safety netting, so this was of paramount importance for this new design of cage.
Blog Post 3: Blog Post 3 | Y6droneODU
Blog Post 4: Blog Post 4 | Y6droneODU
A point is which we fully identified the direction of the project, aside from me being chiefly in charge establishing a direction as team lead was discussed in blog post 6, in which at this point we had already and concretely established the resources we had available and how we could further the project based on that. we were able to reach this point in the project because of prior brainstorming sessions we had had and began to execute, finding out what worked and what didn’t and ultimately establishing what direction was best for the project to go in.
Blog post 6: Blog Post 6 | Y6droneODU
throughout this project I had the opportunity to explore new skills in order to further the project and bring it closer to completion, these included exploring existing Y6 drone frames and gaining a better insight of what actually makes a good drone frame, as discussed in Blog Post 5 expanding my skills in inventor in order to create the final version of the 3D drone frame as discussed in Blog Post 6. Exploring hinge designs for finding the most suitable configuration fir the safety cage for our test equipment, discussed in Blog Post 4.
Blog Post 4: Blog Post 4 | Y6droneODU
Blog Post 5: Blog Post 5 | Y6droneODU
Blog Post 6: Blog Post 6 | Y6droneODU
one of the biggest improvements seen throughout this project on a personal level was the marketed improvement in my writing skills that greatly progressed as the project went on. starting from the BCET request which troubled our group with much difficulty due to our unfamiliarity with the formatting and required information for a proper BCET request that would produce the highest funding as discussed in Blog Post 2. to ending in Blog Post 8 in which procuring our final repost in our final formal meeting of the semester in which the sole focus had been finalizing the final report. the familiarity we had now with the desired construction and format of such scientific papers that we had gathered throughout the semester resulted in far less difficulty faced by our group to effectively create a suitable final report.
Blog Post 2: Blog Post 2 | Y6droneODU
Blog Post 8: Blog Post 8 | Y6droneODU
Given that the overall scope of this project was to optimize an existing drone frame, some of the technical strengths we had was that it was already established for us what orientation the rotors were going to be at as well as specific ratios we had to consider in the final design as described in Blog Post 5. however, along with this came the technical issue of needing to procure a way to make the drone more portable since the end goal was to scale up this design by a factor of 2 in the future, at which point, the transportability would become an even greater issue, also discussed in Blog Post 5.
Blog Post 5: Blog Post 5 | Y6droneODU
Some of the many logistical problems our group ran into while trying to further this project to completion was the fact that our final designs for lattice structures of the rotor arms were too complicated to hand mill and maintain dimensional criticality. this limited us to needing to use a water jet or CNC machine to make the cutouts. subsequently, we were informed at the time that the CNC machine in the ODU machine shop was down for maintenance and repairs and that the CNC would not be operable until the Spring semester. additionally, the water jet, while operable for a small portion of the time we were creating extrusions also fell out of commission and is also awaiting repairs. along with the issue of not being able to create physical examples of our current lattice designs, other materials we had intended to order such as propeller blades were not readily available on approved vendor lists to be able to use our budget on. our approach to mitigating these encountered issues is to potentially outsource our milling work to third party companies that work with the university to complete out lattice cutouts or even alter our design to be able to hand mill it instead. as for the propeller acquisition, we intend to find an equivalent propeller that is available on our approved vendor lists so that we may use our allotted budget towards it. as discussed in Blog Post 7.
Blog Post 7: Blog Post 7 | Y6droneODU
Looking at all the experiences and lessons learned throughout this semester, I would definitely have approached the beginning of the semester differently. firstly, we would make greater efforts to find a time that works better for all of our group members as the lingering issue with most meetings was getting every member to attend. this will definitely be addressed and hopefully improved upon for next semester. however, what worked well was the allocation of tasks when properly delegated. we were able to effectively work on our separate tasks and facets of the project that would eventually culminate in our final design and report. this will continue on the following semester.
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