Construction Luckily the build process was not painful and I did not run into too many hiccups because I had done enough planning. I have predetermined (somewhat arbitrarily) the dimensions and materials for everything before any cutting or building occured. The scale was based on the sturdy wooden dowels I wanted to use. I had learned after my attempted car from week 2 that cardboard was not the best material for smooth movement, so I made most of my components out of wood. I also recall Ibraham reminding us that while hot glue is great for prototyping, it doesn't look nice in a final project, so I wanted to get some practice with screws. I also wanted to make the structure sturdy enough in case I wanted to build off of it for future weeks' projects, and was worried that cardboard might grow weak with wear and tear. The one component I didn't finalize the dimensions of were the joints. I hadn't done the geometry to figure out the angles that the joints should move across until post production, but that was an easy fix by sanding down the dowels they were attached to.
Final Motion The motion didn't exactly happen as I had hoped it would. Since I used two different motors for the opposite walls, I had a hard time syncing up the movement so that it looked like the walls were "breathing" together. It almost looks like one motor is moving faster than the other, which doesn't make sense to me since they have the same inputs on the breadboard. I'm wondering if the physical connection of one motor is weaker than the other and slips slightly. In any case, if I were to fix or replicate this project, I would probably use gears so that I would only rely on one motor and I could be confident that everything was in sync. I avoided gears this time because I wanted to focus on the joints and nail the motion. I would also include the same wires that were on the ceiling on the base platform to keep the carboard moving more smoothly. You can still see some influence from the circular motion of the wheels. Another deviation from my plan is that I only had 2 moving walls instead of 4. This was part due to time constraints, but also because I didn't wantt o waste more materials to make more of the same type of movement. If I were to add the two moving walls, I would attach the motors to the wooden ceiling just as I had to the base so the wheels wouldn't interfere with one another.