Week 4: Designing the Frame and General Maintenance

Over the course of time between Weeks 3 and 4, it was agreed to split up and do research and purchasing for materials and resources. This included a trip to Home Depot to pick up quantities of wood for the frame and structural materials such as wood glue, screws, and braces; an order of Plexiglas; and the research and collection of hand tools and machine-shop tools available.

Additionally, the blog was overhauled to reflect the design theme of the project further. This involved designing and implementing customized HTML/CSS markup, establishing a unique color scheme and appearance beyond the standardized Blogger layout, and organizing the links and posts to make navigation of the site more efficient and intuitive. Although it would be easier to simply use the preset layout, it was decided a well-designed website would improve the aesthetic appeal of the product as a whole.

Reconvening on Tuesday for Week 4's lab, much of the time in lab was spent determining the dimensions of the frame and marking up the wood as desired; immediately following lab, the wood was brought to the machine shop to be altered to match these designs. This allowed the immediate construction of the frame, matching the deadline imposed by the proposed schedule. These dimensions can be viewed in the picture below:

Picture 1: An illustration of the box dimensions

The box is 18.5" wide, 23.75" high, and 9.5" deep and features four ramps, each 0.75" high and reaching from the edge of the conveyor space to 3" short of the opposite side of the box. These ramps differ by 3" at their closest sections. A width of 4.5" was allotted for the conveyor space.

Overall, it was a very productive lab. All items needed for player movement and frame completion were purchased on Saturday, April 26, to meet the schedule for manufacturing.