What’s the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon? Probably sleeping, right? Well, not when there’s a test on Tuesday. You’d think I’d be cramming all day, but instead, I spent my Sunday working on my Ecodrifter project. After submitting it for IRIS, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the model needed a redo—so I went back to the drawing board to make it better.

Here’s how the model looked when I submitted it 10 days ago. Right away, a few things popped into my head:

• The conveyor belt’s elevation had to come down.
• The front of the Ecodrifter should dip into the water a bit to scoop up waste easier.
• The motor was held together with a wire—definitely needed stabilizing with a ball bearing setup.
• Gotta cut the extra weight by ditching the wooden part.
• The conveyor belt should rest on ball bearings and parallel rods so it doesn’t snap while grabbing trash
• The propeller needs an upgrade to make the boat move in all directions smoothly. I’m thinking of adding wheels or maybe using two propellers instead.

Me in work mode, an hour later broke everything down.

1. Soldered the motor to the PVC pipe
2. Learnt some cool tricks with the butane flame torch
3. Picked up some cool hacks with the butane torch
4. Made a few tweaks to the structure
5. The final structure looks a bit like this , unless I change it again next week

Now back to my test preparation, you can see the Information technology book on the printer, its waiting to be opened.