Us in the Tech Museum with our awards for 3rd place!

As a last post for this blog, I'd like to tell everyone (anyone?) who reads this blog that our team won overall solution 3rd place!! And we ended up filling 9 sandbags, and 6 of those were in the right weight (5.5 - 6.5 pounds) range. I personally think that the two judges really liked our device and how we talked to them.

Here's a slideshow of all the winning teams on the Tech Challenge website. Our team photo is towards the end (since we got one of the coolest awards..).

Also, the Tech Challenge people will be telling what the next challenge is in the fall, I'm excited what it's going to be!

Today is the last day before the Challenge Day! Today, we are in the process of tying up all the loose ends on our device, finishing the journal and adding some artistic flair, making the poster, and blogging. We are very anxious yet excited and ready to go to action tomorrow. Amongst most team members, team morale and spirit run high and mighty, rampant in the mid-afternoon sunshine that in some places does not permeate parts of Cassie’s house. We are making our plans for tomorrow, and also mending our costumes that we have revised and improved since last year and the years beforehand.

However, the most important aspect of the work we are doing here today are the improvements, though little and subtle, that we are making to our device. We have learned from past challenges that sometimes all your device needs to get over the top is a small, seemingly insignificant improvement. The improvements that we are making today include:

- coloring the twine ties on the bags a different color than the burlap, so the twine stands out when we attempt to tie the bags- (this is one of those improvements that after the actual challenge, we would be sorry if we did not do)

- work on the handle to increase stability and maneuverability- such as glue together the joints, or add more cable ties to secure the handle and crossbar properly

- replace the old garden-hose green rainwater collecting tube with a new one, that we want to make longer for added maneuverability- we have decided that even though the rope inside the tube does not assist us that much in maintaining control of the tube, it is worth it to just keep it in the tube just in case it might rise to the occasion and come through big for us during the actual challenge

Hopefully, these improvements will help us and aid us in the challenge tomorrow. We are all working hard and helping each other, dividing up the work, yet all working together for a common goal- just like at the real challenge tomorrow.



-Matthew (under Cassie's username)

We wanted to go to the trial today so we had to finish up some adjustments to our device. When Matthew and his dad went to OSH before they came to my house and they showed us something that they had bought, a crank! We immediately attached the crank to one of the legs of our tall saw horse and Ashwin tried it out and said he liked it (since he’s the guy using the ropes). We also added a crossbar to the handle to make it easier for Anisha to push with the handle. After we put on the crank and the crossbar tested them out with our own sand at my house we packed everything into my dad’s car and drove to the trial.

Right when we got to the trial we put our team name on the sign up sheet and set up our device. After we set up the device we looked around and saw some other teams’ devices. Ashwin unfortunately had to go to a soccer game so he didn’t stay when we tried out the device with the sand pile. But it was still nice to have Ashwin with us since we need all of the team to carry our device!

Finally, when it was our turn to try our device out, we asked Matthew’s dad to stand in for Ashwin. Matthew, Anisha, and I came up with a plan of how to carry the device in so we would have the most amount of time to put the sandbags onto the hopper. We tried out our device and successfully filled all bags. But sadly all of the bags were too light. We thought that the reason the bags were too light was because the sand was pretty wet. We tried it out a second time too, and we managed to fill all ten bags but it took ten minutes. They were all around 5-7 pounds. It took longer the second time because Anisha, Matthew, and I were discussing whether they should stop at 3 minutes or go over the time limit to be able to get all 10 bags filled.

After we tried our devices two times Anisha, Matthew, my dad, Matthew’s dad, and I went to OSH again to pick up some parts that could make our device better. We got a new set of pulleys, rope to go through the green tube (to make it stronger), and cable ties for the handle and the bags. Following this long trip at OSH we drove back to my house and attached the new pulleys, put the rope through the green tube, cut the green tube, and attached the cable ties to the scoop and handle to steady the handle. When we were fully done changing our device we packed everything into my dad’s car so we would be ready for the 10AM trial on Sunday.

Today we all worked from 11AM to 11PM, that's 12 hours. At first, we didn't know how to continue because we needed many new parts so we just talked about our project and bounced some ideas around. Anisha came up with a few new ideas to better enhance our device. She was still really interested in using some kind of bike or crank so whoever is pulling the ropes doesn't have to use as much arm strength to lift the scooper. We'll see what happens with this idea.

We brainstormed a little more on how to make our device better. When we had come up with a list of parts to buy Matthew's mom took us to OSH.

Here's our list:

-10 ABS adapters (either 3 in. or bigger sizes)
-new scoop because the handle broke part of our current scoop
-tubes
-more or different wood for the hopper
-PVC washer/nut thing
-dowel for handle
-second pulley
-PVC extender (w/ short threads)
-black tape (for costumes)
-container for top of hopper
-PVC glue

This was our initial list and as we were walking around OSH we got many different ideas. We ended up buying two PVC pipes for the handles and getting a piece of wood for the top of the hopper instead of a plastic container. We also got bigger and thicker hooks for the pulleys to make sure that there isn't too much strain on the wood or the hooks while we lift sand during the challenge. We also got new PVC tubes for both sides of the green flexible tube to make sure there's enough room for the sand to get through on both sides (at the scoop and at the end of the green tube).

When we got back to my house we made the whole hopper with all the parts, attached the handles to the scooper, drilled in the new hooks, attached the new pulley, and connected the new tubes to both sides of the green tube.

On Tuesday Anisha and I got together to work on putting something together to take to the Saturday trial. We started by meeting up at Cassie's house and then heading over to the local Orchard Supply Hardware store and looking for materials.

We came loooking for parts for the hopper and scoop. We already had in mind plans for how we were going to make both things but it was still HARD to find the right materials.

For the hopper we planned on using ten volumetric tubes attached to a plywood board to measure out ten bags with six pounds of sand each. The bags would be attached to the ten tubes by cable ties so we could fill ten at once and then release them all at one time.

We already had a scooper which we had put together that weekend and tested at the trial. We hoped to improve on that design by widening the area through which the sand could fall through.

In some of our experiments at home we noticed a lot of sand getting stuck because the hole was too small. It seemed like a lot of space was being wasted.

After searching through Orchard, we came out with: lots of 3" PVC pipe, some plywood boards, L brackets, siding, circular wooden boards, and an air conditioning adapter.

After working at Anisha's house for 2 hours we ended up with 9 15" PVC pipes. We had hoped to get some sort of volumetic weighing system down by measuring out 6 pounds of sand in PVC pipe.

We then measured the pipes to the appropriate lengths and then cut them, ending up with one less than we needed.

Unfortunately our progress was stopped at the pipes. We did not have the right tools to cut the scoop or the plywood correctly without it cracking or splintering. We were still happy that we got the pipes cut as we were sure we would find some use for them.

We accomplished a whole lot during our meeting! I was at the meeting from 11AM till 11:30ish PM. Matthew was at the meeting from 11ishAM till 11PM. Ashwin was at the meeting from 11AM till 11:30ishPM with a break from 6PM till 8PM for soccer. And Anisha was at the meeting from 11AM till 6:30PM. WOW, um long meeting? yep.

PICTURE HERE OF PROTOTYPE We started our all day meeting by building a prototype of the scooper part of our device. While we were building this we talked a lot about how we were going to actually MOVE the scooper (rod, ropes, pulleys, bike gears??) and how this affected which directions we could move the scooper (up, down, sideways, angled, forwards, backwards...). We tried out a couple different ways of doing this on our prototype.

After we made this (and ate lunch) we (Matthew, Anisha, Ashwin, my mom, and I) went to OSH and bought mostly everything (and some different things) on our list:

Here's a list of all the parts we need to buy, does anyone have time to buy these things before Friday? I personally can't, but my parents said they could buy some of the items.

scooper prototype: string (my dad and I got string yesterday), 1/2 in. by 1/2 in. wood (for stand of scooper), cardboard, and paper (for scoop, tubes, and bags). If anyone can get those tapioca ball drink straws, we think they would be a good size for some tubes for the prototype.

real scooper part: 2in by 4in wood (8 ft. long maybe? we aren't sure. this is for the tall saw horse/derrick. at least five pieces), saw horse connector kit (to make a tall saw horse, the metal parts), rope (lots!), bike parts?? for controlling the ropes and moving scoop, scoop (metal? wood? plastic? very big!), and tube to get sand from scoop to top of hopper (flexible? plastic bag-like material?) and maybe a stiffener is needed for the tube (wood?) as well.

hopper part: some kind of funnel/box (heating duct? metal? round hole on bottom to connect to tube), volumetric measuring tube (if anyone wants to figure out how much volume 6 lbs. of sand is, that'd be great!), some kind of flexible tube connector to go from bottom of hopper (funnel/box thing) to volumetric measuring tube (this could be plastic or cloth), some kind of item to connect the flexible tube connector to the other two items (clamps?), and wood or metal frame and platform to hold hopper and steady it and keep it on the ground.

You have creative license to buy whatever parts and items you think could help!

-Cassie

After our approximatially two hour trip to OSH we came back to my house and started putting the saw horse together and seeing how we would move around the scooper. We talked and tried out lots of our ideas. Ashwin left around 6 to go to a soccer game and Anisha left around 6:30 and Matthew and I talked about what kind of costumes we would like. Since this year is about floods (meaning rain) and our name is still Screeching Beagles (as it has been for 8th grade, 9th grade, and this year) we decided on yellow poncho raincoats with "Screeching Beagles" spelled out with black tape on the rain ponchos. Our dog tails are attached to the ponchos and we all wear our dog hats (baseball hats that have "Screeching Beagles" and floppy ears on them). We made sure to decide on costumes we can move easily in them because this year (unlike all of the past years) we all need to be able to move around a lot. We figure that in real life people could easily be using our device in rainy weather and will likely be wearing raincoats or rain ponchos!

Around 8PM, Ashwin and his parents came back, we ate dinner and then got back to building since Ashwin and his dad had come back with some more needed parts for our device. Matthew's dad and my dad joined us as well. We discussed and shared our prototype and our many ideas that came up while looking around OSH, building our prototype, and starting to build our real device. We ended up modifying many parts of our prototype, but we all think that they are definitely for the better and that's what happens when we are really working; things change very rapidly and continue to evolve throughout the building process.

We stopped around 11:3oPM and we're going to start again tomorrow (Saturday) at 11AM. We'll have around 2 hours to build some more and get ready for the trial and then we'll head down to the trial and try out what we have (and see what everyone else has!).

Below is an email I just sent to everyone with many questions we've come up with, things that need to be done, and what each person can do during the challenge:

Hi TC team,

Things to do tomorrow (well, now today) with the scooper and saw horse part of our device:

1. attach the long green plastic bag like material tube to the blue scoop
2. maybe cut down the threaded part of the PVC adapter (in the back of the scoop) so it doesn't stick out as much on the inside part of the scoop
3. cut the horizontal beam on top of the saw horse to the right length
4. attach pulley with eye-bolt (or maybe just more rope to attach it??)
5. attach ropes to each other and through pulley (what lengths?)
6. attach handle (what direction? use the handle the came with the scoop?)
7. add tape marks onto the ropes (for seeing how high the scoop needs to go) (maybe this is going to be done at the trial?)
8. make holes for two bolts to go into tops of the saw horses (this would help with setting up the saw horse and making sure it's level and even)

Questions about scooper/saw horse:

1. do we need to add more pulleys to make it easier to pull (and make it straight up and down) and maybe to separate the two ropes so we could have them in different places?
2. do we want to have mechanical advantage with the rope system (Ashwin and I know what mechanical advantage is, do you, Matthew and Anisha, know?)?

Things and questions to do with the hopper:

1. We're thinking that for the trial tomorrow (Saturday) we may just want to try and use one of the cardboard tubes that we have already. Or do we want to actually make a full single cylinder/ volumetric tube hopper with the tube as well as the PVC threaded adapter?
2. do we want to buy all of the needed items for this or just try it out with the cardboard tube for the trial tomorrow (Saturday)? If we just tried it with the cardboard tube, we wouldn't be trying out our full design... do we want to try out the whole thing?
3. we need to come up with the needed items

Things to ask and try out at trial:
1. we need 5 more bags
2. check boundaries and rules to see if we're doing anything that doesn't fit with the rules
3. check if we can have our device touching the sandbags in the 2 min. set up time.
4. check if we can have the saw horse partially set up before the 2 min. set up time so it can be ready to just move in.
5. ask what the "neutral zone/area" is for
6. if we have time, try out device with sand pile in totally different configurations (really high in one spot, really spread out, with holes and hills).
7. try out device as many times as we can
8. where can we can (and where do we want to) stand and have the parts of our device in the circle and relative to the sand pile? take lots of pictures. we need to have an easy, organized, and practiced set up.
9. need to figure out if we need two people for the ropes or if one person can do it? and need to figure out what everyone is doing.
10. if one person can do the ropes than the jobs for everyone would probably be: ropes person, handle person, filler person, and sandbag person.

these jobs are for the scooping part of our 3 minutes:

ropes person is in charge of moving the scooper up and down and getting the scooper at the right angle to get the right amount of sand in the tube. ropes person has to communicate with the handle person and the filler person.

handle person is in charge of guiding the scooper and making sure a good amount of sand (that is also a good amount to be lifted by the rope person) is in the scooper. handle person is also in charge of making sure the ropes don't twist and that the sand gets through the tube (because they are the one closest to the sand pile, the scooper, and the connection from the scooper to the tube). handle person has to communicate with the ropes person and the filler person.

filler person is in charge of filling the bags and the tube. filler person needs to tell ropes person and handle person when they need another scoop load of sand. filler person may also tell ropes person to quickly lower the angle of the scoop to stop the flow or to make the flow slower. filler person can also stop the flow of sand by crimping tube. filler person is communicating with everyone.

sandbag person is in charge of making sure the right amount of sand gets in each bag. this means that they need be looking for if sand is leaking through volumetric cylinders and if bags get moved around. maybe they would need to keep hopper stable and make sure filler person isn't filling bags to fast. sandbag person communicates with filler person.

when the filler person and sandbag person say that all 10 volumetric cylinders are filled and leveled then everyone moves over to hopper and cart. filler person (and either ropes person or handle person if it's heavy or if we want to make sure that no extra sand falls in) lift hopper (which includes all attached cylinders) while sandbag person and either handle or ropes person make sure that the right amounts of sand get into each bag and nothing leaks in or out. when hopper is fully off everyone ties bags with the sandbag person in charge. DONE (in less than 3 minutes hopefully)!


I hope this sounds good, my dad and I just talked about all of this. We'll talk more about this tomorrow (Saturday).
-Cassie

Today, March 24th, we had a meeting with everyone. Ashwin and Cassie chose to start off by building a prototype for our conveyor belt with cups ideas.

Conveyor belt with cups idea:
-cloth for the belt
-two paper towel rolls for the shafts to turn the belt.
-three different sized yoghurt cups and cardboard strips to attach to the cloth (by making slits into the cloth).

Ashwin continued this idea by wrapping twine around the tubes to make it turn the cloth. That didn't work!

Anisha also tried to continue this idea by cutting many cardboard tubes in half to make them a sort of half pipe. She was planning on attaching many to the cloth as well as around the tubes so that it would be like treads. Anisha didn't continue with this idea because none of us knew how to continue..

Also, Matthew and Cassie continued with our prototype from last weekend. Looks at the pictures and you'll probably understand it. We had four strings, two to move the scooper and then two more to move the whole scooper back and forth to get the sand into the hole at the end of the collecting area.

At the same time Anisha and Ashwin worked on another idea that would go with the collecting device that was just discussed before. Anisha came up with an idea to make a kind of rake inside of scooper. The rake is made up of two dowels pushing or pulling a slanted piece of poster board. We all agree that we like the dowels better because they are stronger and more stable and someone can push OR pull the sand collector.

We couldn't think of anything else to do with these prototypes so we moved on to doing something with Ashwin's brother's bike. We jumped right into taking apart the bike to figure out it works! As we were taking apart the different parts, we learned a whole lot about bike mechanics and how we would want to put it back together! We have lots of ideas for next meeting after seeing and looking very closely at the bike and how we would want to adapt it to fit to this challenge. We ended up taking off both wheels, the seat, some of the gears, brakes, handles, and a whole bunch of screws and bolts!

Last Saturday, Anisha, Ashwin, my dad, and I went to the first trial of this challenge. We didn't exactly have anything big to test out but we tried a scale we have, a big cardboard tube, and a orange juice container made into a sort of GoBagger (by cutting off the bottom of the container). We tried all three of these items but none of them helped us that much with getting 5.5-6.5 pounds of sand into a bag! However, we did get some good ideas just by seeing the huge pile of sand and actually trying some of our ideas out instead of just brainstorming.

The odd thing about this trial was that the only ONE team (out of around 10 teams total who came to the trial) had a device to try out! In all past years, there have been many more teams trying out their devices, even at the first trial! And we usually have something to try out by now. Hmmm, I wonder if this says something about the challenge being a little too challenging... Oh, well actually, there was another team who had something to try out (a broomstick and a dust pan..).

I talked with the woman who is one of the people in charge of the Tech Challenge and asked her if we could get more sandbags. She said to just email her and ask her for 5 more so we would then have our limit of sandbags. I then asked her if we could get more than 10 sandbags because we know we want to try out and modify a bag or two. The woman said she hadn't thought about it and said she WOULD think about it.. so I'll email her and see what she says. I'm hoping that she'll get us more than 10 sandbags because we really might want to modify them in some way (and I know other teams will want to modify theirs as well). I guess that's something that they need to think of.

After we tried out our device-type-things we walked around the Tech a little bit and saw some interesting exhibits. Then, we walked to the car and drove home (well, my home) and Matthew and his dad were waiting for us since Matthew couldn't come to the trial but could come a little later. Now with the whole team, we talked about what we saw at the trial and bounced some more ideas off each other. I can tell we're all ready to start building stuff and stop talking about it, so we're having another meeting this coming weekend (unfortunately, without Ashwin) and hopefully we'll start MAKING something!

Work in Progress (3/8/06)
-After the meeting on the 5th, it was decided that we start trying to get some prototypes of various design possibilities started. We still have a range of ideas and have yet to narrow down our choices or really focus on one way of solving the challenge. I chose to attempt to replicate a weighing device or some sort of scale to ensure that only around 6 pounds of sand was put into each bag. The design would work like a large funnel with two sheets that could block off flow of sand. We could measure out how much of the funnel was taken up by 6 pounds of sand and then mark that portion off. By putting the two sheets on the bottom and above that mark we could control the flow of sand to ensure the right amount reached the bag. by putting the bottom sheet at the end of the funnel in place we would start collecting sand. Once the sand reached the 6 pound mark the top would be covered and the bottom opened. This would make sure that only 6 pounds of sand was dumped. Once the sand was emptied, the bottom could be closed again and the top opened to let in 6 more pounds...i can't seem to upload a picure of what im talking about....hmhmhmhm....ill try adding another post so you can see it.. other wise you're stuck with your imagination...

to bring for next week's meeting and the first trial:
-bleach bottle for using a kind of GoBagger kind of thing
-tie for bag (some way to modify bag)
-scale to practice weighing bags
-sandbags!

To do next week at the trial:
-look at others ideas to get our own ideas!
-ask for more bags and ask if we can get more bags so we can try modifying bags without ruining our only bags.
-whoever can come to the trial should come so we can do these two things.

Hello everybody. Today we had many ideas, but not one set idea. what were those ideas you ask? They were all kind of good but they had flaws. nothing struck us as perfect. but what is in this world? i'd settle for good strong maybe. the only good strong maybe is a shovel and something . we're going to try the bag with our hands. my advice is that people should just fill bags before. one idea was to use a little the tong like thing that's kind of like a leg press that you use your legs to power. one problem is that the challenge is on too big of a scale to use battery powered stuff and too small of a scale to use heavy machinery. however, using ones legs is an infinitely preferable option to use!

Our third meeting went well since this is our first with all four team members here! We first talked about creating this blog as well as breaking into two sub-groups (Anisha and Matthew as one and Ashwin and Cassie in the other) so we can be able to get more work done and it wouldn't be as hard to set up meetings.

Then we started brainstorming and continuing our main idea about the archimedes screw. We thought about how we could make an archimedes screw since we tried to look at ones we could buy but they were too big and expensive since they were mainly for bulk materials such as dry dog food and other kinds of grains. We thought that we could make the screw part out of cardboard and a dowel. Anisha also asked 'does it really have to be a cylinder or can it be square?' We discussed lots of other ideas and searched the web many times for sandbagging devices.


*matthew and his dad are going to go get 6 pounds of sand!