Category: Fall 2021

In the month of November, we made great physical progress towards the final product. At the beginning of the month, we moved the trailer from SPN to the UTD Machine Shop in order to start making progress. While we were waiting for our materials to get here, we completed all the assembly drawings for both the mid ramp and the lower ramp.

Around the second/third week of November, the materials were finally delivered to the UTD Machine shop. During our Wednesday lab time, 2 of our team members went to prep and clean the material to start cutting, while the other team member worked on the CAD drawing of the new hinges and the detachable bottom. On the last week of November, we all went as a team to the machine shop and started cutting the steel tubing.

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Plans for the End of the Semester

• Finish cutting the last parts of the lower ramp
• Have andrew weld everything together
• Finish EPICS exhibit poster and write the final project paper for next semester

In the month of October we did the finalization of all the logistics of the project. We managed to find the most cost efficient way to order the needed materials for the trailer and started working on the assembly drawings for the manufacturing. While analyzing the previos teams design we found that having 2 big heavy steel sections of the ramp folding on to each other would be a big safety hazard when putting it away. In order to minimize this danger we decided to make the lower ramp detachable in a way that the only real change would be a mechanical joint change. This redesign will not affect our timeline nor budget making it the most efficent way of solving this problem.

Trip to Equest

On October 10 the Neigh Sayer’s visted Equest and briefed with Bobby (our sponsor) on our team’s progress. We went over to get approval of our new redesign and along with that we got some feedback from Bobby. He approved the design as long as the lower ramp section was able to store within the mid-ramp itself.

Plans for Next Month

• Finish assembly drawings 
• Begin prepping the metal for andrew to weld
  • Clean metal
  • Cut metal
  • Sand metal
• Finish manufacturing of lower ramp and mid-ramp

During this month we established our place as the Fall 2021 roster of the Neigh Sayers by completing our Team Charter. After that, we began to go over the materials that the previous semester team left for us. We found that the previous team left a list of parts that we needed to order and a list of things that still needed to be done with the project. In order to get more clarification on some things, we contacted Jarren Kreska (a member of last semester’s team) to come during our lab time to give us more details on the position of the project.

Later on in the month, we completed the BioRaft training in order to gain access to the UTD design studio as well as being able to start the FAB Shop Training that we needed to work on the project. After talking to Andrew Bitner we went over the CAD files and came up with a more feasible semester plan. The goal for this semester is to complete the manufacturing of the mid ramp and lower ramp while making the adjustment to the lower ramp. The adjustment that we are considering is to make the lower ramp detachable making the folding parts lighter and lowering the risk of a safety hazard.

Trailer Update

The trailer had been parked, all throughout the summer, in the back parking lot by the EPICS Studio. On September 26, the parking permit that we had expired. We had no choice but to move the trailer inside the new EPICS room. In order to make the trailer fit through the doors, we had to remove the axle with wheels before transporting it on its side on dollys. We had 3 other people help us along with this process. In the future, we plan to move the trailer to the machine shop where we can work on manufacturing the other two sections.

During the remainder of the time, we had this month, we introduced ourselves and became acquainted as a team. We did a team bonding activity by getting boba together and playing board games. The team learned more about each other while having fun together.