Sprint 3: 2-Dimensional
This sprint, we all agreed we were far enough ahead in software that 'twas time to double down on the mechanical system. We rearranged ourselves onto a gantry team and a dispenser team and started iterating.
The gantry team built two gantries this sprint. The first was a major upgrade — a two-axis gantry made entirely out of hardboard and held together press fits everywhere but the two places we used zip-ties. The move to two axes brought with it many unforeseen consequences and intersections. Luckily, we had budgeted time to find all of these problems, make note of them, and fix them in the next iteration, which we did. The final gantry for this sprint was better in every way and ended up being the final version we will present when we demo this project.
The dispenser underwent several major redesigns over the course of this sprint. First, we replaced the conveyor belt, which had failed us thus far, with a gear that would regulate the sprinkle flow like a water wheel. We designed a more compact and formal mount to the gantry. The gear soon proved to be unfeasible due to the number of potential failure points, so we simplified it to a simple unregulated funnel with an agitator to push sprinkles through.
Unfortunately, our micro-servo proved unable to reliably agitate the sprinkles. Thus, in the interest of producing a functional system by semester’s end, we decided to pivot from dispensing sprinkles to dispensing M&Ms. Hopefully, the larger medium will prove easy enough to manipulate that our product will be ready come demo day.
