Week 8 Recap: BLOOD, Sweat and Tears

Coming back from spring break, Mike and I were behind in our progress. In order to make up for the lost week, we spent significant time in the shop this past weekend (3/24–3/26) putting some of the final elements together on the physical machine. This proved more difficult than we foolishly thought it would be, and we are still behind as of 3/27/18. It is imperative that throughout the next few days leading up to the holiday weekend that Mike and I have the machine functional and only in need of aesthetic improvements. During the weekend we took the playfield off wheels since it was not working as intended.The playfield board will still be removable but instead just slide along ramps. While cutting wood for the back casing on the table saw, there was a poor judgement call that resulted in my thumb being cut deeply by fragments of a broken guard. Taking multiple suggestions to get the cut examined by a doctor, Mike and I went to urgent care just off campus. In the end there were no stitches required, but the aftermath is still prominent. We also lost an entire day of work. Further inhibitions to our progress came during the fitment of the flippers, where we learned there was interference where they needed to come through the machine. The solution to this problem was gears! Simple engineering allowed us to rig up a method of controlling the motion at a spaced interval. The flippers and shooting mechanism have been designed but are not fully functional yet as we are waiting on springs and some other components to arrive. Looking ahead, the plan is to finish the analog machine finally before April 1st. This will leave us almost one month to take care of the projection mapping and make the machine truly shine.