Final Crunch

Gluing

I guess it was inded ok to undo the ducttape. When life gives you no clamps of the right size, make clamps.

I attempted to mill a stand, starting with 2 circles, one with a pocket one with a hole, but realized the stand needed to be much heftier than small, layered circles of wood.

The next attempt to make a stand worked fairly well as a temporary solution, but was not stable. I found a super heavy base and cut some aluminum to secure the steel channel, which was secured onto a steel corner thing (green thing on left image below), but, as one might guess, there was too much freedom of movement.

It getting later and later in the last week, I needed to figure out the stand ASAP so that I could work on the rest of the components. I wrote out all the possible solutions (left, image below) and settled on what I thought was the simplest solution--using structural support that could easily have weight added at the base. Using wood from some discarded shelves, I used a squirrel saw to cut the three supporting boards (for sides and back, not front as that would make user trip) at a 72 degree angle to a height that Kels and I determined the lowest setting could be for the cube. This would have also been milled but only the upstairs shopbot was open and these boards were too large.

Not finding any screws, I painstakingly used nuts and bolts to secure the top piece using more aluminum that needed to be cut by hand. A little while later, I learned that we indeed had screws and nails, so for the lower supports/shelves for boxing gloves or weight to add, I used screws like a sane person. The structure was a great start to hold something that could take punches.

The original plan to have a trolley conencting the cube to channel seemed impossible (based on previous tests and logic) to make in a way that both rolled smoothly within the channel and would maintain its track while experiencing a significant amount of force in all directions. Moreover, after some user testing with the foam box, it didn't make sense to have it constantly moving up and down in addition to the randomized lights, and more sense to have it set at chest-nose height of the user so they could see which side was lit. After some discussion with Kels and reflecting on the last class in which we were told to focus on having a "nice finished product," we decided to make a finished product that could take serious hits, be easy to adjust for each user, and easy to assemble/disasemble rather than add a bunch of stuff just to hit the 2 sets of electronics requirement.

Thus, I searched for metalic solution to connect the cube to the track, seeing what could possibly fit and secure an extrusion for the cube. It ended up needing to be inwardly hollow so that it could fit a steel extrusion between and be secured with nuts and bolts without affecting the motion within the track. This required a significant amount of sawing and drilling steel, something I have never tried before and hope never to do again :). But it worked!

The next step was to make an easily removable connection on the base of the track to connect with the stand. So, I added a board to front of the stand, and created an attachment on the base of the track secured to two thick, aluminum rods that could easily be bolted into the front board of the stand.

The first attempt to make the track attachment used 2 blocks of wood that deserve a shoutout for eating/breaking 5 screws and a nail, harder to drill than steel. Obviously used different wood after the sixth failed try to insert between the back board and aluminum around the track.

To improve the ease of inserting this base into the stand, I had to cut part of the back board off which was super fun due to using a new tool: the Japanese pull-saw. I want one.

Finally, the structure was done. I added a small steal attachment to the top of the stand to bolt the back of the track there as well, which didn't affect the movement of the cube attachment at all, perfect!

But now it didn't look clean, so I sanded all the edges and decided to spray paint it red (a lot of things in krav maga are red and black but I was in a red mood). Unfortunately, during my second coat, the red spray paint ran out.

As I started painting it black instead (we had a lot of black spray paint), I had an idea--maybe everyone in the lab can sign it and it gives it more of a "street art" vibe. This was super fun and it was great to see everyone add something new--a picture, a name (even one in Chinese letters), a symbol, etc.

After adding the cube, it seemed the bolt that connected the track to the top of the stand now impeded the path of the cube attachment with the added weight changing the angle slightly, so I found (after much searching) a flathead bolt that worked nicely.

The flathead bolt is shown below, as well as the simple nut-bolt-washer solution used to set the height of the cube.

All done

We both/each attempted to add an interface that would tell you how many hits you got in a minute, etc. but could not figure it out in time as we were deleriously exhausted.

My hands are absolute crap now, full of glue, metal dust and splinters, and will be until my skin cells regenerate but wouldn't change a thing.

Finally, we filmed a video which I edited.

After the showcase, the BeatBox moved to the first-year MDE studio in SEC.