As of now we have designed different locking mechanisms for our Retractable mechanism by drawing 2D CADs and then converting them to 3D CADs to bring our ideas to life. As of November 11th we have completed task 2 which is evaluating different ideas to our design and as well as task 3 which is drawing 2D Designs those ideas and currently 3D Cading are top ideas. As we can see in figure 1 and figure 2 we started by drawing different concepts in how our device will work. These drawings are based on the Whippet which is a previously mentioned device that we have decided to modify and create a device that will attach to the whippet and create it retractable. As part of our progress we have already bought the whippet to ensure we have the correct measurements and see exactly what we are working with so as we are designing we can take that in account. One of the challenges that we had was figure out different measurements and components the whippet was made of but when purchasing the device it answered a lot of our questions.
Besides the task we have completed we have also done different calculations that we need to know how much force our device must withstand for skiers. In Figure 3 you can see that we have a time vs velocity graph that shows final velocities for a 55 degree slope. We chose 55 degrees because it is the average slope that skiers encounter. We also wanted to choose the most extreme numbers, so we can make our device withstand the most force possible to be able to have the best performance. We have also created a code that outputs a graph(Figure 4) that shows the different slopes vs different initial velocities and shows the acceleration it will be at that point.
In figure 5 we see a 3D model for the section of the mechanism that moves. The cylinder underneath this model is a simplification of the actual geometry that will be required to fit our mechanism into the rest of the ski pole. In figure 6 we see the geometry of the cylinder.
The next step is to combine these two 3D models into one final design prototype. After this, we can begin the physical creation process. Our primary goal for the next few weeks is to finalize these 3D models into the first prototype. Which will lead us to be completely done with Milestone 1 by November 25th.
The main challenge our team foresees for the next few weeks is getting the geometry of our design correct. The geometry we are trying to fit our design into involves many curves. Getting these curves to align perfectly is going to be a hassle, but we are going to 3D print our prototypes as needed to ensure our device fits. If this trial-and-error method of fitting our device geometry does not work, our team is prepared to mathematically approximate the curve from real-world measurements.
Furthermore, future challenges center around finding out how our design works in reality. Calculations and 3D models cannot substitute real-world testing, and we anticipate unknown problems to arise once our device starts to be physically created.
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