Fall Quarter

This quarter is a design and estimation quarter. This is a time period in which a design for the JCATI conveyance system is conceptualized and parts are designed. Analyses will be calculated for different parts of the system based off of system requirements, and manufactured parts will be drawn up based off of the analyses which are subject to change as the year passes. This will be the foundation for the project as it moves into Winter quarter which consists of real world assembly and revision. (Gantt Chart Appendix E)

Winter Quarter

This quarter is a manufacturing quarter. Parts and stock will be purchased, manufactured, and assembled before the end of the quarter to prepare for testing in Spring quarter. Major changes were made to the conveyor belt during this time, and the most notable change was to swap back from steel to aluminum in construction. This was done because it was decided that it would be easier to bolt things down rather than welding in case parts would ever need to come off later down the line. This change also makes the end product much lighter than it would have been with a full steel frame. Parts will be manufactured using multitude of methods from 3D printing and CNC to cutting and sanding by hand. With these parts done, all that will be left for manufacturing will be for the leg brackets. Assembly begins once the rear bearings, legs, and motor are purchased. The hopper will be purchased as well, but this is not a part of the conveyor belt. Parts were all ordered by February 26th, and only a few holes needed to be made onto the frame before fully assembling the conveyor belt. (Gantt Chart Appendix E)

Spring Quarter

This quarter is a testing quarter in which the manufactured system will be tested with a set of constraints to ensure that the it will work as intended. Outside of the typical website and engineering report updates, presentations on the project will be done as well including, but not limited to, the JCATI 2024 Symposium and SOURCE presentations with testing results. This quarter began with the testing for the motor and belt. Further testing has been completed to include the hopper, but this was where some issues came about. Testing times can be seen in sections 6 with deliverables in section 7. Testing may result in changes to smaller parts, but as these parts will be 3D printed on personal printers, no project costs will be incurred. (Gantt Chart Appendix E)

Budget

This year's budget is supplied by the Joint Center for Aerospace and Innovation initiative with a maximum of $5,000. The budget for Fall Quarter is mainly for the costs of design work and estimations of future quarters as there is yet to be any manufacturing processes or purchases to be made, and being the only person this year on the JCATI Project means that there is no need to split the budget between different people and parts of the system. When it comes to the parts, as this quarter is mainly for designing, nothing has been purchased, but estimates have been made for this section which will be used for the coming Winter quarter. With all purchased parts from the hopper to motors to various parts of the conveyor belt and controllers, purchased parts are estimated to take roughly $1,279.32. Outsourced parts will be similar to purchased parts, but these parts will be designed then manufactured using school resources and considered as donated parts. The designs and estimates for the parts are an expected $435. Because there is no real cost to the student in using school resources, this is an estimate of how much it would cost for real world manufacturing. The real cost for Fall quarter comes from labor. Using the average entry pay of $31.65 an hour, designing and working on various sections of the project for 138 estimated hours comes out to $4,367.70 worth of time in work done.

In Winter quarter, due to changes in manufacturing and design choices, the expected cost changed to reflect these choices. As some parts required materials that were unavailable in Hogue, those parts needed to be ordered as stock and added onto the cost of parts. This added up to an expected total of $1886.63 to be spent on purchasing stock and parts. Thanks to the old conveyor belt having some useful products as well, some parts such as rollers and bearings would be moved down to the outsourced parts. This made a new total of $224 for outsourced, or donated, parts. The new expected cost in Winter quarter will be $2110.63 for parts purchased and donated combined and $6478.33 with labor included.