Cody Log

Fri Oct 11, 2013

Today we worked mostly on building the section of the backhoe that attaches to the tractor. This involved much cutting of threaded rod and welding nuts on top to make bolts of the correct length. I also welded the feet to their pivot plates, as well as rebar to the bottom of the feet to give added traction (used a Z pattern). We mounted the hydraulic cylinders for the legs and tested them by hooking them up to the tractor. One of them had a leak but after tightening everything up the leak stopped and the legs seemed to be functioning well. We worked on this from about 1pm to midnight.

Thurs Oct 10, 2013

Worked on the MicroHouse roof all day with temp worker Mark Applegaurd (sp?). First we attached the white trim on all sides, then we attached the drip guard to the North side, then we tar papered from North to South (the opposite of the original plan in order to minimize time spent walking on the tar paper in an effort to reduce rips and tears of the tar paper). Next we added drip guards on the East and West sides, and finally on the South side. Finally we attached the metal roofing and screwed it down sufficiently to hold it for the night.

Work left to be done on the roof: more screws need to be added to fully secure the metal roofing, and the overhung edge on the East side needs to be trimmed. In order for this to happen we probably need to purchase a new pair of tin snips because we can't seem to find the ones Chris left...

Tues Oct 8, 2013

Redid the Sketchup design of the backhoe pivot to match our paper model. Also added bolts to the design. I don't believe I uploaded the design to the wiki, but I sent it to Dan and the design has since been added to and is on the backhoe wiki page.

Mon Oct 7, 2013

This morning we had a team meeting and went over plans to work on the backhoe design. I have been assigned the task of creating a tech tree of choices in order to lay out the various possible designs we might try. Below I'm going to upload a screenshot of what seems to be the industry standard backhoe pivot. We are using a site called coggle to do the mind map for the tech tree and you have to have the picture hosted somewhere else in order to have it be full size.

Here is a shot showing the piston mounted at a much wider angle using the laser cutout model

Sun Oct 6, 2013

This evening I shared the Backhoe sketchup files with several of my mechanical engineering friends with the hope that they might be able to come up with a simple solution for achieving a 180 degree range of left/right movement. Several agreed to take a look, hopefully they come up with something good. Meanwhile Dan Emmit and I are playing around with the laser cutout model...

Sat Oct 5, 2013

Starting this log. Should have created it earlier to keep track of progress on the microhouse build that started 9/28. That being said here are some of the images and content from the build.

Northwest corner of the microhouse going up

Lucas laying down the 15th (out of 16) CEB course

A big of improvisation Chris and I made in order to check the fall of the sewage drainage pipes. I believe the fall needed to be 1 inch down (y axis) for every 4 inches of distance (x axis). We attached these two small pieces of plywood to a level.

Chris working on the plumbing. You can just make out the strings we laid out in order to make sure the pipes came up in the correct place.

Chris working on the utility module. This was one of the most complicated aspects of the microhouse

Table containing various plumbing, electrical and fixture pieces.

CEB brick floor being laid out over sand.