After numerous data collection runs, ARROW is beginning to reach its final form. As of the end of week 8 of my summer research, ARROW has successfully completed a total of 7 data collection runs on 7 different days. Every time I take ARROW to local parks, I learn something new about it. Over the past two weeks I have added more upgrades to ARROW, and now I believe that it reaching its final form for this research.
Two of the major upgrades that ARROW has revived have been a new set of wheels and more bungie cords to anchor down the tower.
About a week ago (as of the publication of this blog post) ARROW had a mechanical failure on one of its wheels. A completely broken wheel bearing sidelined ARROW for only a day since it was a relatively simple issue to fix. I decided that the best fix for this issue would be replacing all four wheels on ARROW. This would not only fix the wheel bearing issue, it would also address the other aging bearings on ARROW by completely replacing them. New wheels will hopefully prevent another bearing from failing which would improve ARROW’s overall reliability.
The other upgrade given to ARROW over the past two weeks has been the addition of more bungie cords and better placement of the already exciting bungie cords. This allows the top half of ARROW to be more firmly secured to the wagon which in turn gives the user more confidence that the tower won’t fall out while ARROW is taken through rough terrain. Now, rather than 7 bungies holding down the tower, there is grand total of 10 bungie cords holding the tower to the wagon. They are also more evenly spaced across the bottom board of the tower.
ARROW was taken out for a few test runs after the upgrades and they seem to be working. Although the new wheels introduced a new wobble to the rear of ARROW, it is not much a problem since the increased bungie cords are doing their job holding the tower much tighter than before. Overall, these simple upgrades will hopeful allow ARROW to run in even harder to reach areas in Appleton city parks.
New placement of Bungie cords on ARROW