A Working Prototype

Over the past few days, we have made some serious progress. We finished our final cardboard prototype.

 It came to our concern along the way that balance might be an issue with our new design, however, after extensive research on center of gravity and base of support we came to the conclusion that it would be stable enough to comfortably support a person on top of it. We built another cardboard model, this time using a trapezoid shape instead of a rectangle, which we think will be able to hold the weight more evenly.
Note: In this cardboard model we didn't make legs, because we were running out of time and we knew exactly how the legs would work:

We also had a conversation with Amy, although she was not present that day. She expressed to us that the best way to figure out if the model is stable in this scenario is to build and test a metal version sans welding, so we did:

Screwing the form together.

We cut the steel bars, drilled holes into them, and used screws and bolts to fasten them together. We also tried to use glue to keep certain parts on as a temporary substitute for welding. For next class, we hope to make the structure more permanent by welding certain areas of the stand. After we do this, we will be able to finally test the stand out for function and stability.