Overall my project went very well. I was able to build a fully functional project that I will definitely use for the foreseeable future. Although my design did go through various changes due to construction issues, it still turned out great. The only aspects I head real issues with were in the alignment of the bottom bearing and the final staining of the wood.

When using a drill press, the accuracy is not quite up to par with that of a mill in a machine shop. In a machine shop, you can zero edges to make sure your holes, cuts, etc are exactly where you want them. With a drill press this is not the case. By fixing my pieces and making multiple cuts without changing anything, I was able to align the upper bearing and the through holes. However, when I had to flip the wood and make the other bearing housing, the alignment was slightly off, causing unwanted friction between the bolt and the bearing.

I chose not to fully sand down some parts of the word which resulted in rough jagged surfaces. I kept these surfaces in order to give the final product a true home made feel however, this cause the stain to leave discoloring throughout the part. Going back I should have sanded everything thoroughly.

While I did not attend the main expo, the ATLAS expo was a great way to present my project. It was different from many of the other projects which were themed around computer science, however people still found interest in my project.

Moving forward I would like to make custom L brackets in order to mount my project to my closet wall and to make some additional cuts into the main mounting piece in order to adhere to my aesthetic further. I would also be interested in fixing the alignment of the bottom bearing if possible.

Overall, I learned a lot of designing products and how to design for something more than just the functionality of a product. i would definitely recommend the class to other students but wish I had more free time during my semester to design an even better product. Thanks, Prof Hertzberg.