ME 72: Engineering Design Laboratory
Fall 2021 - Winter 2022
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Term 2 (Winter 2022)
Term 2 (Winter 2022)
During the second term of ME 72, we redesigned the wheeled robot over winter break. This design featured more efficient wire placement, over 220 lbs of downforce from neodymium magnets, and better gear positioning. I machined and assembled this new design in ~1 week along with one other person, using the waterjet, mill, drill press, and laser cutter to finalize our design. We continued to improve our design throughout the term. This class culminated in a competition with the four other teams in the class. Ultimately, thanks to our extensive testing, we were able to win the ME 72 annual competition undefeated.
Term 1 (Fall 2021)
Term 1 (Fall 2021)
As part of the requirements for the mechanical engineering degree at Caltech, I chose to take ME 72, which is one of the capstone design courses. Every year, students choose teams of 5-6, build three robots, and compete at the end of two terms against all other teams in the class. This year, the challenge was to build three robots - one with RC control, one fully autonomous bot, and one linkage bot. I led the mechanical design and assembly of our wheeled RC and autonomous robots. We have a working robot finished, and are looking forward to continuing to improve our design next term.
Our initial direct drive design - revised after PDR to account for gear train requirements
Our finalized CAD design, which was prototyped in roughly two weeks. We relied on the waterjet and mill for most of our fabrication, which cut down on manufacturing time.
The complete mechanical assembly, without any mounted electronics (motors, sensors, battery). The wheels were bought online from a robot sumo supply shop - everything else was waterjetted and then milled or lathed to fit our requirements.
The final working design
Course description: A project-based course in which teams of students are challenged to design, test, analyze, and fabricate a robotic device to compete against devices designed by other student teams. The class lectures and team projects stress the integration of mechanical design, electronics, mechatronics, engineering analysis, and computation to solve problems in engineering system design. Critical feedback is provided through a series of formal design reviews scheduled throughout the ME 72 ab course sequence. The laboratory units of ME 72 can be used to fulfill a portion of the laboratory requirement for the EAS option.
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