Obstacles

Global COVID-19 Pandemic

This Capstone project was scheduled to be in development from September, 2019 thru May, 2020. During the construction phase of the project in February, 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic had reached the United States, and schools closed in early March for the remainder of the spring semester. The team no longer had access to the physical components of the project and as a result, extra care was taken to provide as much theoretical information as possible.

General Obstacles

Limited Product Information

Parts for this project were ordered online for multiple reasons including price and ease of access. The primary drawback to doing this is there is no opportunity for personal inspection to ensure dimensional accuracy and compatibility with other parts. Because many of these parts are often purchased for different applications (such as the drip tray designed for wall-mounted beer taps), many of the necessary dimensions were not available online. This was the case for most of the larger components of the build. The team contacted manufacturers to obtain the required specifications. The majority of manufacturers contacted did not have the requested information, and therefore the team ordered the parts to the best of their ability and took measurements once they were delivered.

Inaccurate Product Information

Another problem with online ordering is that the pictures and descriptions offered online may not accurately depict the item that you are ordering; this was encountered when the team ordered the drip trays. The online description described the built-in drain to have a 5/8″ MIP threaded connection for a drain hose, however the item received had no threading, and the drainage assembly needed to be revised.

Casters

Because the original casters included with the cooler cart served to bind the legs to the base, upgrading the casters proved very difficult. The customer had requested 8-10″ pneumatic wheels that would easily traverse rough terrain. Casters of this size are normally attached with a 4-point mounting plate rather than a threaded stem like the included casters. This led to the decision to align one corner of each mounting bracket with the legs and secure it using a bolt with the same threading as the original caster. This posed another problem, however, because the thread diameter of the original caster was too large to fit through the hole on the mounting bracket, and so a dremel tool was required to bore the hole to a larger diameter that would accommodate the required thread diameter. This may have been avoided by choosing smaller casters that could be mounted with a threaded stem or by taking into account the thread diameter and hole size on the mounting bracket when purchasing the upgraded casters.

Institutional Obstacles

Order Approval Procedure

The process for ordering parts at UMASS Dartmouth consisted of multiple stages of approval. This normally meant that once a part was submitted for order approval, the order would be processed 7-21 days later. There was also an issue where the spigots were ordered and not paid for, causing more of a delay. Parts were ordered in early January, 2020 and the last part arrived mid-March, after students had left for Spring Break.