Demo Day

Now that our manufacturing process, design and software were all finalized, the only thing left was to finish building the entire thing.

Demo day sculpture

Goals

Mechanical Goals

  • Produce 7 more axles
  • Finish production of jellyfish
  • full scale assembly

Software Goals

  • Polish control code
  • Finish website
  • Solder and mount electronics

Deliverable

Leading up to Demo Day we leaned hard into manufacturing and assembling the final piece - the goal was to get from our single Sprint 3 shaft, to a full 8 shafts. To accomplish this, we:

  • Got every shaft welded
  • Attached all pulleys to shafts
  • Tied all jellyfish to pulleys
  • Attached all shafts to the frame.

On the morning of Demo Day, we had all 8 shafts mounted, and were ready to go. Then, disaster struck. Our shafts weren't fully secured to the motor / shaft interfaces and several fell off, damaging components in the process. We scrambled to replace the broken pieces. And, by the end of our demo period we had 6 shafts back up, running and reacting!