Reflection - Carlea Hazzard

So, our team Balls of Fury and our little car certainly gave us trouble in the end. We had a slow start with the design and deciding our strategy, but we finally got rolling on building the project about a week after the exam. That week was hell week for all of us with midterms. It would've been nice to start building early but we did what we could. I felt more comfortable working on the lathe, but eventually I think we all had a chance to get better on all the machines. Selman did alot of tedious work on the CAD model :( . But we started manufacturing and unfortunately had to remake a few parts due to the holes not lining up correctly. We also started to worry about materials we were supposed to be using, and the length of car was becoming an issue and beginning to interfere with our waterwheel design. However in the end, a little rushed, we worked out the kinks and eventually got to the point of assembling the car, which took a heck of a lot longer then we would've wanted. We had a few moments of improvising with connecting parts and having to drill new holes or make new pieces. Unfortunately the acrylic ended up getting a few cracks in it. And the shafts we realized a little late needed to be sanded down to fit in the ball bear holes which turned out to be a major problem of why our machine wasn't running well during the seeding rounds. The motors gave us some problems with being difficult to put together and always falling apart at the wrong time. The competition went surprising well/ lucky for what I was expecting. A tie. A tie. A forfeit. Then getting our butts kicked by Aquatone, but also doing our personal best. Unfortunately our strategy with the fence was not able to deploy because we were having trouble with the motor and gear being able to roll it out on competition day. But, 'IN THEORY' it was a good a idea. But, looking back there are certainly things that needed to be changed to use our strategy/design to make it better. However, it ended up working better than expected. Had a problem with turning because the car was at maximum dimensions. But, being so big, also worked in our advantage sometimes by blocking our opponents team strategy. Overall, in the end and lots of rush building that last week the car turned out pretty good. :)