This week I spent all my time focusing on the brakes of the shopping cart. The thing about the brakes is that they are hydraulic brakes that get activated when a piston is pushed on a separate piece which is connected by a tube. My issue was how do I push a piston when I press a pedal that is pulling a cable. So I first modeled up a concept idea for how my mechanism would work. The idea was that when the brake pedal is pushed it pulls on the brake cable which will be linked up to a rod with a joint in the center. On the other side of the rod on the opposite end the cable is attached to is the piston so when the cable is pulled (brake pedal is pushed) it will pull the rod pushing the other end into the piston activating the brakes.
Then I laser cut my brake mount and engine plate mount out of cardboard to see if my screw holes and measurements lined up and they both lined up perfectly without me having to make any adjustments to either one, yet. I also fixed up a few things for people outside of shop. I drilled a hole into a flask cork for biotech so a pipette could fit through and fixed up my friend's glasses from media tech. I ended off the week by finally beginning to model the piston onto the shopping cart. Hopefully next week I will have my handlebars and can begin attaching those onto the cart.
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