Final Design

This is the final design of our Early American Energy Project.
During the process of creating this windmill, we encountered a lot of Edison moments. Edison moments are when we run into a problem and have to redesign our project to fix it.

One of the major Edison moments we encountered was when we realized we didn't have access to the materials we thought we did, so we had trouble finding the correct gears to put on it and a belt or chain to connect them together. In order to find gears, we had to rummage through my dad's supplies and take apart a drill to see if there were any sprockets. Eventually, we found some small gears that we could use and nails to use as axles.



We tried using a rubber band as a belt, but there was way too much friction. If we were to do this project again, we would use longer nails so the windmill blades were lower than the gear so there would be room for a belt and we would use large sprockets with a chain.

A new project requirement would be to not rely on Vezino's VEX kit parts since we didn't realize we did not have access to them until it was too late. An added challenge for the teams would be that they can only use materials that could be found in Early American history, and can only BUILD with tools that were found in Early American history.