Transcript Integration of FIRST and PLTW

Integration of FIRST and PLTW
John Wise
Lee Smalley
Andy Newell
Project Lead the Way
Five engineering classes which teaches the
fundamental ideas behind engineering
Its goal is to better prepare students for
college curriculum
It gives students experience and knowledge
in the field of engineering
Students can earn college credit to RIT and
USC for all the classes
Engineering Design and
Development
In the final culminating course of the PLTW
program:
Students are given the challenge of solving an
engineering problem. Basically inventing or
bettering a product or process
 Our group used the robot’s tetra manipulator as
our product to design

Our Place
With this new problem to be solved, we saw
an opportunity to take on our own sub-team
and design and develop the manipulator for
the robot. Prior to the formation of our
group, the team had elected to use a spear to
lift and lower the tetra. We saw this solution
to be simple but lacked consistency and
durability.
Brainstorming
We compiled a list of 46 ideas which could possibly be used in
our lift-arm mechanism.
These included:
Servo-motor gripper
Grappling hook
Forked spear
Pneumatic claw devise
Hook with spring
Spear
Retractable Hooks
Suction device
Lead screw claw
Many more
Five Main Ideas
Magnetic Fork
Spear Hook
Two Point Base Grabber
Lead Screw Claw with Guiding Shield
Weight Sensitive Spear Hook
Our Proposed Solution
We interviewed many engineers and
students on the team and with their input we
decided to design and construct the weight
sensitive spear so that when the weight of
the tetra was on the arm an end piece would
flip up and keep the tetra from falling off.
We then began to design by building and
testing prototypes.
First Prototype
With our first prototype we discovered we were
able to accomplish what we needed to do. It still
needed a lot of work.
Redesign and Sketches
We rethought our design and
came up with a new idea
which would be smoother
and more consistent.
Our Design
This new prototype
worked exactly as
we needed it to!
We Still had a Problem
Our arm must be able to fold inside the
robot while still fitting to the robot’s size
constraints.
We designed plates with a built in axle to
allow the arm to fold up.
Testing The Manipulator
After we put the arm on the robot it was
shipped to the University of Central Florida
where it was ready for competition.
It performed excellently!
Match 5
Match 10
Match 18
Thank you for your time!