Session F: Day 4 - Work or Beach? Both!

Wednesday is beach day. We proved this by trying to have beach day on Tuesday last week when exigent circumstances forced us to change our schedule - the change caused a ripple in the stoke, we were discombobulated, there was a tremor in the force. It was tricky to get back into things, and tricky to keep things going with three straight long build days. But this is Wednesday, and it's the right day to go to the beach, but... we still have a lot of work to do.

Charlotte and Audrey are adding a horizontal stabilizer to the guide wheels on their cart. This is an untried solution, but the track revisions mean that there is guaranteed clearance for this approach. We're excited to see it in action because it could mean the end of bent bolts.

We have become experts at making stacks of washers, wheels, boards and bolts.

Lyman and Lauren are working out an alignment issue on the tracks that is highlighted by the excessive wideness of their guide wheels.

The Wowizowi design calls for a port for the drive belt to pass through the deck of their cart.

Then Jake checks the belt to see if the port is big enough when the belt is stretched.

Kablooi has put friction tape on their drive wheels, because they predict massive torque from their paracord pull-start system.

Yoel puts the Wowi Zowi cart up on the lift to work on it from below.

Panda has got a really technical build going on; drive pulley on the rear shaft, new guide separators on the lead wheels, and soon, some kind of crank above. Who's working on the crank?

Zach, with his out of tune shirt, and Liora of Sqiki, are playing catch-up on the other teams as they work to gel their plans into something workable. Sometimes the tinkerers have enough previous experience to just start into the project, but then they hit this moment (sometimes called the doldrums) when momentum peters out.

Jake, Rory, and Emma; productive and focused every time we catch up with them.

Piki is getting ready to move their crankshaft design from conceptual to actual. This is one part of the build that will take some figuring and a couple of iterations. Let's hope they are planning for that...

You know what goes well with mechanical engineering? Bananas.

Mar takes the test pilot seat on the Kablooi cart. Without front guide-wheels, this is a useful but dangerous test.

The rule of the windmill is: one person that built the windmill must be present when anyone is on it. Nik and Eli sprint to the scene of the crime.

Chalk marks identify the areas on each section of track that need to be addressed. This gap is getting the (homemade, bespoke, artisanal) Tinkering School wood filler.

This stuff dries hard and gets smoothed and finished with a wood rasp.

Then, lunch, and head to the beach (while Gever goes to Redwood City to (not) give a presentation).

Due to a massive delay while we had to manage 300+ gigabytes of photos from our previous weeks of camp, so please enjoy this photo montage (queue the travel music).