Introduction:

Over the past two weeks, Pablo and I have worked on an extendable table. The table may look fairly normal at first sight, but there are handles to be pulled out and extended. The main problem I've encountered when eating lunch is a place to put my food. I usually sit on the couch, along with 10+ other kids. It is very challenged to put all that food on two small tables. I often just eat on my lap. But, with an extendable table, the students and I will no longer encounter this problem. Our solutions with to created a yin yang design in between two top and bottom layers. The yin yang design has handles attached to them, where you can pull them out for extra space. There are three extensions in all, adding much more room for students lunches.

Iterations:

Our first iteration was made out of cardboard and was created to expand the table as much as possible. What did work was that it was actually an expandable table, which was what we wanted to create. Yet, there were many problems with this certain iteration. For example, the extensions would stick out way too far and would flop, even if it was made out of wood. We wanted to fix the stability and smoothness, along with creating nicer handles.

Our second, third, and fourth iteration consisted of the same top and bottom layers, but different handles. We created these iterations out of wood and used a yin yang yong design. Yin yang yong is basically like yin yang but we three sides instead of two. Using wood and just three layers added to our problems of stability and smoothness. Our second iteration basically had no handles at all, so we knew that we needed to somehow recreate the handle. Our third iteration slightly took care of this problem, yet we knew it wasn't perfect. The handle was just a square sticking out and was challenging to pull out. The fourth iteration also did not work. We did create a 3D printed clip but there were still other problems.We came up with the idea to have 2 layers on the yin yang yong, for even more extra space. But, our coaches did not really like this idea so we omitted it and continued on with our other problems. 

Our other problems were that there was no place to lock the extensions. We didn't want them to be moving all over the place, we wanted them to lock at a certain spot. Another problem was our 3D printed clip. The first clipped snapped almost immediately so we had to widen it. 

Our final iteration works perfectly. We attached all the layers together with a lock screw and added on the 3D printed clips (which worked perfectly). We also created the iteration out of thick wood. We sanded each piece and attached them together. Overall, Pablo and I are very satisfied with the outcome of our table.

Conclusion: Our final product is an extendable table which can attach to either two of the tables next to the couch. During lunch, many kids eat there and have no place to put their food. With our yin yang yong design, these 3 extensions allow extra space for students to put their lunch. It attaches to the table by three 3D printed clips, and locks at a certain point so the extensions don't extend too far.