2024-05-02 Leadership Mechanical Meeting

Date

May 2, 2024

Attendance

@Alison Thompson

@Sohee Yoon

@Smile Khatri

@Evan Janakievski

@Conall Kingshott

What Went Well?

Presenter

Notes

Presenter

Notes

@Alison Thompson

  • got lots of new members in W24

  • second drone got built

  • cabin is completed

  • improved task documentation from previous terms

  • design review requests and design process documentation

@Smile Khatri

  • lots of machining tasks

  • members were passionate about taking on tasks

  • 2 PMs for cabin was a good idea. We should do this for complex projects

@Arjun Mandair

  • Antenna Tracker is built.

  • I can see documentation improvements among the team.

    • Pictures were utilized to track progress, and its looking rly good.

    • Props to @Alison Thompson and @Smile Khatri and whoever else took the time to setup the documentation practices. I think it rly helped keep things organized and track progress.

@Sohee Yoon

  • A lot of good documentation throughout the term (def helped when reviewing CAD designs and the process)

  • I really liked the mech-design-review-reqs this term as it helped organize everything (from both ends, reviewer and the reviewee?)

  • Got the cabin done with the addition of a second iteration of it completed before S24 started (thanks to@Evan Janakievski!)

  • New members were actively participating in the meetings and work sessions (by asking for tasks, etc.)

@Conall Kingshott

 

  • Good progress on the competition drone.

  • We made some more ambitious things than normal which was nice to see.

  • New member engagement seemed pretty good IMO.

  • Had a few people actually speak up when the thought processes/standards should be changed which is a good improvement.

@Evan Janakievski

  • Pegasus 2 was completed

  • Gained project experience along with @Sohee Yoon on something that allowed us a lot of little pieces to learn from and manage

  • Lots of new people looking for tasks

What Can We Improve?

Presenter

Notes

In meetings notes

Presenter

Notes

In meetings notes

@Alison Thompson

  • Communication

    • Need to ensure that for every task assigned the expectations are clear and not rushed

    • Ensure the whole mech team knows the CAD standards and we aren’t letting mistakes slip through

  • Task assignment to the correct people to get it done on time

  • Should use Asana better, we tend to forget about it and not hold to deadlines on it

  • I left people to their own devices more than I should have to get things done on time, need to step in earlier to prevent rushed projects

  • Expensive mistakes were made because we weren’t double-checking things, we need to be more careful with how we do things

  • Improve mech meetings so they are more of conversations than one person just talking

  • @Conall Kingshott we should make sure we are available after the meeting where people are assigned a task to make sure if people have questions or don’t understand what they need to do they can get answers

  • @Smile Khatri schedule meetings to work through tasks people are unsure

  • @Conall Kingshott understanding of CAD guidelines comes from the top, make sure you as a PM or lead understand them and ask questions if you don’t understand/disagree/have changes

  • @Alison Thompson we need to check for guidelines before we check design itself, need guidelines to be habit

  • Should partner senior designer with newer member who has interest if the new member wants to work on a task that they don’t have the skillset for yet

  • Be transparent as to why we may not assign a task directly to someone who wants it but doesn’t have the skillset

  • As leads and PMs we can still assign tasks to ourselves , don’t feel bad about it. Try to take on a jr member who is interested and talk them through the process of you working

@Smile Khatri

  • Encourage members to participate in flight-tests

  • train members on drone assembly, there are very few people that actually know how the drone assembles

  • making sure we provide clear mechanical requirements to the flight-team as to when the drone can be flown

  • print/manufacture extra components for parts like the landing gear, standoffs etc. If they fail at flight test, we can quickly replace them

  • different tasks have different complexities. We should take into consideration the experience and skills of members when they take on a task

  • Yes we need to get better at having people build the drone

    • have people install their own prints and cases

    • if you make something, install it

  •  

@Arjun Mandair

  • Some redesign had to take place for the Antenna tracker mounting. Like to take responsibility for that. Lack of planning and i think the design couldve been better thought out. I apologize.

  • I think pictures are worth a thousand words. I've noticed that when I was working with members , it really helped when I drew out the problem instead of explaining with words.

    • This helped us stay on track and understand each other with ease. I think this is something we should all practice moving forward in essentially every project.

 

@Sohee Yoon

  • Check-in on members of the team who we assigned tasks for. Def could have checked-in on some members more often to see if we needed to reassign tasks or else we ended up pushing/depending on that one task to be finished to move on.

  • Use peggy 1 as building practice after comp, we have two drones and can have one be a learning drone

@Conall Kingshott

  • I think we need to make sure we delegate tasks more carefully to people with an appropriate amount of ability to execute them.

    • I was originally going to do waterproofing, but that fell away cause I needed to take over landing gear because it was probably too complex for new members.

  • I would like to see PMs doing more PMing instead of mostly being more of the Senior ICs on a project. Being a contributor is totally fine, but we shouldn’t be conflating the two.

  • Would really like more eyes on the standards we have cause I wrote a lot of them quite quickly. If you think something is dumb, bring it up and we can come up with something better.

  • Make sure people are aware of standards and direct them to them before reviewing for mistakes like under-defined parts.

  • Would like to see a better mech presence at flight tests.

  • It felt like a lot of people didn’t feel they had ownership over their stuff to the point where after we stopped running meetings for the term, very few people did work and it felt like leadership needed to run clean up. To be clear, this is something that needs to be solved on the leadership end - creating that investment and path to accomplishing tasks, not the fault of individual members.

 

@Evan Janakievski

  • Timelines for projects fell behind

  • Communication

    • About timelines, what is expected, and overall letting other members know what is occurring

  • Use time wisely for items that need to be manufactured or 3D printed

  • Complexity of tasks and what is expected from each one

    • Maybe try to have people invest time into research and such a bit more

    • Have more side projects (that don’t require much investment)

  • Doc for resources and videos in confluence

  • Need to figure out a project which will actually use the sim data before we assigning simulation task

Admin/Process Ideas

Presenter

Notes

 

Presenter

Notes

 

@Alison Thompson

  • Want a way to make sure everyone follows guidelines, Smile and I discussed a more interactive presentation in a mech meeting may help

  • Want to revisit the documentation system and work on adding a good way for other subteams to make requests of mechanical

  • Revisit how we use Asana so it works better with our workflow

  • Midterm leadership check-in (like this one), can schedule soon and move later if needed

 

@Arjun Mandair

  • My improvement section relates to process improvements.

    • I think we should always include a drawn picture of what we want to avoid mistakes and communicate ideas with each other. Not talking about chicken scratch either. I think we should provide solid color-labelled diagrams for members to easily understand where it is easy to distinguish object.

 

@Sohee Yoon

  • Same with what @Alison Thompson mentions above, I did notice we didn’t use Asana as much as previous terms, so prob come up with an idea to integrate it more ?

 

@Conall Kingshott

  • As far as documentation, I’d say we should lean more on photos and screenshots than walls of text.

  • I am always in favour of minimizing writing and non-engineering effort.

  • Just because someone asks for something doesn’t mean you need to give it to them.

  • CAD screenshots (kinda necessary)

  • easier to follow the thought process of new members if they write it out

    • writing is helpful for CAD reviews

  • think about effort on the mech side

@Evan Janakievski

  • Drone edit document

    • keep track of everything that is changed/adjusted on the drone to make sure information is not lost

  • More photos in documentation

  • Keep track of tasks better using Asana and sticking to deadlines

    • Make sure people can complete tasks before a deadline

  • decisions docs are a new system, feedbacks appreciated

  •  

Action Items/Next Steps for Current Projects

Who

What

Notes

Who

What

Notes

@Alison Thompson

Admin

  • Mech feedback forms (BootCamp + general)

  • Mech meeting lettucemeet

  • Task requests from other subteams

  • Reorganize documentation system

  • 3D print queue note, only used when crunch time

@Smile Khatri + @Sohee Yoon

Peggy 2

  • High priority (WANT TO FLY BY MAY 11th)

  • Need motor holes drilled out slightly larger so the motors can be mounted level (around 4.5mm).

  • Landing gear legs need holes for endcaps + endcaps printed and mounted

  • Center assembly needs to be loctited and tightened down once electrical is complete

  • NOTE: the heatsets in the clamping blocks have been finicky, be very careful when tightening down the clamping m5s as they can cause the heatsets next to them to pull out. We can decide if we want to investigate ways to improve this

@Alison Thompson

Peggy 1

  • Lower priority

  • New landing gear?

  • Second cabin?

@Smile Khatri

Antenna Tracker

  • High priority

  • Long spacer to fix the bowing problem that is misaligning the gears

  • Add grease (Alison brought some in, can be found in the chemical bin)

  • Alison will CAD

@Smile Khatri

Gemini Case

  • Mid-High priority?

  • power supply location was changed on the PCB without notifying mech, current case cannot accommodate the Gemini

  • Will ask Merek if he wants to finish it off, if not I’ll do it, its almost done anyways

New Projects for S24

“Owner”

Notes

Other Subteam Support Required

“Owner”

Notes

Other Subteam Support Required

@Arjun Mandair

Height adjustment mechanism

  • Something that @Divit Gawri worked on in during the Fall 2023 Term.

    • I would like to continue working on it next term.

Telemetry Antenna Tracker

  • So far we have two Antenna Trackers(Radio Control, Video)

  • I know @Anthony Luo talked about creating another one for telemetry

Antenna Tracker Hub

  • Assuming we move forward with the height adjustment mechanism i was thinking we can have some sort of like Antenna tracker hub where the height adjustment mechanisms are controlled simultaneously

  • Can use gear mechanisms to control this.

  • Could also be used for mounting and whatnot.

Electrical, EFS

@Evan Janakievski

  • Anything simulation/research based

    • Pegasus w/ motors simulated

    • Fixed-wing designs

 

@Smile Khatri

  • After comp

  • Fixed-wing designs

  • Foam planes with varying shapes for example

  • “double it or cut it in half”

  • runs sims + try flying and see what happens

EE, EFS

 

  • Pegasus upgrades based on comp

 

 

  • curved CF?

  • Design dummy cabin curved shapes based on sims, fly irl, then practice manufacturing with molds (wetlayups or vacuum)

 

Roles for S24 Term

Who wants to continue being a PM for S24? What projects are people interested in managing?

Member

Project

Member

Project

@Sohee Yoon - Stay PM

Anything is good

@Evan Janakievski - Stay PM

Anything is good for me

 

 

 

 

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