Team 73 - Pughsain Bolt

Sam Knowles
Parker Chmiel
Harvinder Singh
Rik Banerjee
Sid Ramesh

ME250 | Winter 2017 | University of Michigan

Mockup Exercise (Addendum to MS5)

A mockup is a scale or full-size model representation of a preliminary design, often created as a

method, among others, for demonstrating, verifying, or testing a concept. Constructing a
mockup can be implemented at various resolutions of a prototype design that is, mockups can
be made on the system level (e.g. your RMP as a whole), the subsystem level (e.g. the lifting
mechanism of your RMP), or even the component level (e.g. the bucket used in the lifting
mechanism). For the purposes of ME250, you will be operating on the subsystem or lower
(component) range.

You and your team are now entering the concept refinement stage of the design life cycle,
meaning you have selected a final concept but some uncertainties may still need to be
addressed before final concept becomes the design with intent to manufacture. As such, the
purpose of this mockup exercise is to help answer the two biggest questions you have regarding
your selected concept, using the physical insight that a three-dimensional design tool can
provide. Thus, by the end of this mockup exercise, you will have built at least two separate
models (subsystem or lower) that will help you validate your initial concept, push you in the
direction of design refinement, or somewhere in between. Mockup materials foam, foam core,
wooden dowels, welding rods, glue, tape, etc. and necessary tools will be provided in the
ME250 Shop. This document must be turned in to your GSI before your Design Review
presentation.

Pre-Mockup: Before constructing your mockups, you need to think heuristically about your final
concept, much like you and your team did when moving from concept generation to concept
selection.

1. List below any and all uncertainties that you have regarding your final concept. Feel free to
think on the system scale, but remember that your focus is to develop the subsystems of the
final concept.

Our main two uncertainties are the powertrain and the lifting mechanism. We are not sure how
we want to do these yet in our design.

2. Now, identify and list the two biggest questions you want to answer regarding your concept.
Keep the selections on the subsystem or lower scale, and consider how a physical model in
particular could help answer these questions.

We want to figure out how our RMP is going to move and how fast it is going to move. We also
need to figure out how we are going to lift the cubes over the wall.
 Post-Mockup: After having completed your mockups, answer the following questions (before
your Design Review presentation):

1. What did you learn about the prototyping process by constructing your mockups? Consider the
advantages/disadvantages of creating a physical model relative to other techniques weve used
in class (e.g. sketching, Pugh Chart, etc.).

We learned that no matter what sketches, or charts that you use, creating a prototype for
your design is the best way to see if the concept will work. The mockup helped us realize
that some things that we had originally thought would work, did not. Some of the
functional requirements we originally had are not feasible for a successful RMP, but the
Pugh Chart and sketches we have made did not show that. One disadvantage that we
thought the mockup had was that we could not really compare different subsystems
using this method, where we could with a Pugh Chart or sketches.

2. What did you learn about your particular design by constructing the mockups? Consider the two
biggest questions you were trying to resolve, along with the other questions you had. What new
questions are raised by what you have learned?

We figured out how our RMP will move and how we are going to lift the cubes over the
wall. The mockup helped us realize that our original idea for a lifting mechanism was not
the best option because it was not feasible for our RMP. We tried to have a pulley
system that curved so the cubes fell over the wall without having to use a motor, but the
mockup helped us realize that to do this the total height of our RMP would be greater
than 12, which is over the requirements to start. We did not realize this doing a sketch
of our RMP, but the mockup helped us figure that out. Also, the mockup helped us
finalize an idea for the powertrain for our RMP. We originally were going to try to use all
wheel drive, but our RMP will use real-wheel drive to maximize speed and only use one
motor.

3. Mockups are often not a universal solution for resolving all design concerns. Were there any
limitations (difficulty in design replication, material constraints, lack of necessary tools, etc.) you
encountered when mocking up your concept? What are some questions that remain
unanswered after this exercise? Explain.

We had a few limitations when producing our mockup. The first one was that we had no
tool to cut our original design out. We tried to make the arms have holes in them and
have the arms curve over the wall. There was no tool to cut out the inner hole that we
wanted our scoop to move up and down in. Also, there was no way to test if our
powertrain is going to work or not. There was no way to move our mock up, so we just
have to assume the design we made for the powertrain will work. One question that
remains unanswered after the mockup is: How are we going to drop the cubes into the
next zone? We figured out the powertrain and that subassembly to raise the cubes once
we have them, but h\the mockup did not help us solve the problem of putting the cubes
over the wall. We will have to find a way to do this using our new powertrain and lifting
mechanism that is feasible.