Sunday, November 27, 2011

Presentation to Bechtel



On Tuesday November 22, Allie Lehane, Aaron Batker Pritzker, Sam Hyatt, and Casey Kerr presented the purpose of Project Lead the Way, our school's past achievements, our current projects, and our contribution to the community of Saratoga Springs to a group of four engineers from Bechtel Corporation. Part of an effort to raise money for the class, the presentation prompted many questions from the audience about our design process, what we have learned, and where we plan to go from here. A tremendous success, this experience gave us a taste of professional fundraising presentations, and a generous investment of $500 from Bechtel as well.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Fundraising


This past week, we gave presentations in class addressing the estimated final costs of our projects. Based on what was presented, we need to continue to raise money so we have sufficient funds to complete everything by the end of the year.


The EDD Class recently recieved a grant from Youth2 for $500. We also held a bake sale in school yesterday where we were able to raise $134.60. In addition, we are holding a Kan-Jam tournament in December. We hope to accumulate donations from local businesses and use this tournament as a fundraiser to bring in more money for our class.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Former EDD student meeting with current EDD students



Tom Corona, the lead programmer in the campus security project 2 years ago, is meeting with the current students working of the campus security project, over the upcoming break. Tom will help the students understand how the code works, and help them organize it. Tom, being a self taught programmer, will also share some of his experience and advice to further inform this year's EDD students.

Monday, November 14, 2011

MakerBot Versus Reprap


The 3-D printer group gave a presentation in class about the positives and negatives of buying a complete kit or starting from scratch. The decision was narrowed down in deciding between the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic and the Reprap Mendel.
A second presentation will be given next class in further detail of each model's printing specifications, tolerance and quality of printing, and of consumer reviews.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

An Update on Computer Cooling

When last you heard about the Self-Contained Submersion Cooling project, it was a fantasy existing only in my own mind. Now two months into the class, team leader Joshua Nixon and members Aaron Batker Pritzker, Alex Gailor, John Howe, and George Kaplan are making that dream a reality. With two main objectives in mind, to minimize turbulence in the flowing liquid and to maximize the area of contact between the processor and coolant, we created two sketches of possible base designs. We used information on the physics of fluid flow, obtained from textbooks, high school teachers, and a professor from Harvey Mudd College, to create a model in Inventor. This model, pictured below, is a basic template for a system that will accept standardized input and output tubes, fit over all modern processor heat spreaders, and guide liquid with minimal turbulence. Several dimensions including tube diameters, overall part length and widths, and the angle at which the tubes enter the block were left flexible to accommodate changes in the design.

In addition, we have a design for a system to mount the block onto a computer's motherboard and a gasket to prevent leakage underway. The next step in our design process is to generate a list of parts to purchase for a complete system, such as tubes, a pump, a radiator, and coolant. Our team has split into smaller groups to research these challenges in parallel, and we look forward to prototyping and testing our designs in the months ahead.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Students Present to PLTW Representatives




Today, a group of representatives from Project Lead The Way came in for an overview of what we've been working on over the past two months. A small group of students; composed of Allie Lehane, Aaron Batker Pritzker, Sam Hyatt, and Casey Kerr, presented to them. They showed a PowerPoint which summarized some our school's past EDD projects, our current projects, and what extra things our group is planning on doing to help the community.

The presentation was carried out very nicely, and was followed up by questions.

Lastly, the representatives stayed for a while to observe our class in work, and to speak with some students individually about their projects.



Monday, November 7, 2011

Fine-tuning



With the final group members picked for each project, everyone is excited to start working with their new teams! As a class we decided to narrow down our projects to just three. The three projects we chose are the 3D printer, the computer cooling and the campus security app formerly known as "Aegis."

Today, we were proud to come up with the official name for the campus security app. It will now be called, "Ally Campus Security." While it would seem an easy task to rename the app, it proved to be a nuisance of a task. With many good ideas taken for other security products, our team spent a few classes coming up with the new name.

Also, myself and three other classmates fine-tuned and presented a powerpoint to our class. This presentation will be given to board members from project lead the way on Wednesday, November 9th. With groups chosen and great progress being made, it is very easy to tell we will have great success this year


Thursday, November 3, 2011

The Future of Printing




Yesterday, we were presented with a new and fresh idea in class. The idea would be to create our own 3D printer. After researching and finding out what is already out there on the market, we found all kinds of 3D printers ranging from highly intricate designs at $20,000 to basic DIY 3D printers at $1,500.

One specific 3D printer, on the more affordable side, that interested us was called the MakerBot. It is essentially a machine that can produce a tangible exact replica of something from a digital image on a computer. If you would like to learn more on the MakerBot, go to www.makerbot.com.


I don't know about you, but I would love to have one of these to play with!

Bake Sale Soon


On November 17, 2011, 14 days away as of
posting, there will be a bake sale. All proceeds will fund this year’s EDD
projects, including the computer cooling project, and the campus security project.
All items, including cookies, brownies, and muffins, will be baked and donated
by members of the EDD class for a reasonable price.