Recap Week of March 30th

     This week was an exciting and highly productive week for Herman Cain Train. We have successfully finished the engineering for our entire vehicle including engineering drawings for each of our parts. Additionally, we have machined most of our parts and we are beginning with the assembly of the actual machine. As you can see below, we have the basic structure of the machine fully done as well as the full completion of our most critical module. All we have left to do is make a couple parts to attach the wheels and the motor and we will be finished.
     In order to successfully machine the parts below, we have discovered that it is best to work with a group of now more than 2 people. One person controls the actual machine and the other gets all the correct tools, the set up and knows exactly what and how the part is to be created. Having two people in a group is also beneficial because if a situation arose where decisions needed to be made, having half of the group is better that possibly putting the blame all on one person.
     One decision that we made this week was how to connect the motor to the wheels. We decided that we would drill and tap small holes into the shafts on the motor and the wheels. We also would drill holes into flexible tubing so the screws would go the tubing and the motor/wheel shaft.