Intro – In this challenge our goal is to use gears in order to create a crane that rotates and can pick up a large weight. We use a turntable to the crane can move the weight and a two motor crane with 3 gears to create an advantage.
Day 1 – Today we brainstormed ideas in order to get a good design we did some research and thought about how we could create a good crane with as many gears as possible. We drew up a design and started to build.
Day 2 – Today we started building our crane. We built our design only to realize it wasn’t possible to connect it to the turntable. We then played around with our one motor crane and just couldn’t effectively build a crane that was strong and could connect to the turntable.
Day 3 – We changed our design to a two motor crane because it could be easily connected to the turntable and also have lots of gears so we could have a high gear ratio. Since we finally had a design that worked and made sense, we built the entire motor today and also had the turntable half done.
Day 4 – Today since we had our crane and turntable done for the most part we focused on our base. We decided to create a very large, wide base that was stable. After lots of trial and error we found a base that was stable and worked for our turntable design and crane. It was larger than most groups but we wanted to be safe.
Day 5 – We finally finished our winch system and we were ready to test. Our design was great and worked perfectly however we struggled with the code. After lots of trial and error we found a code that worked and we got the time of 35 seconds to complete the challenge.
Reflection – We learned a lot about how to solve problems because at first me and Peter were really struggling to get started. Then we hit our stride and were working very fast. We ended up having the best time out of the two groups that finished within the time restrictions and got 1st place. It was a very fun challenge and I learned a lot about the NXT and gears.
Final Run
Sean Nicgorski 