Thursday, December 22, 2011

Kan Jam Tournament Success


The Kan Jam tournament, which raised money for our EDD project fund, was a huge success. With around 40 participants, the tournament raised well over $200! Everybody there had a great time.

There will likely be similar events in the future.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Kan Jam Tournament!



The Saratoga InvenTeam will be holding a Kan Jam Tournament this Tuesday, December 20th. We are hoping to have a lot of students come and play! It's only $10 dollars per team of two and there will be free pizza for the players! It should be a good time so make sure you sign up and come play!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Cupcake CNC under construction


This week, we will continue assembly of our new 3D-printer. This printer will be used to make specialty parts for our class's 3D printer and used as a benchmark against our custom made 3D printer. These 3d printers will benefit our school for several years, as some students will be able to bring their 3D models to life.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

From Drawing Board to Workbench: SCC's parts have arrived!


Last week, the Self-Contained Cooling group received most of the parts necessary to build a prototype. Now with a pump, a radiator, tubing, coolant, and a competing product against which to test, we are ready to send our base designs out to be manufactured. While we wait for our part to be printed, we will work on assembling all other parts to fit standard computer cases.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

EDD Giving Back to the Community

Recently, all of the EDD students have been greatly helping out the community; with an emphasis on aiding the younger PLTW students in their engineering problems. Volunteering is not only a great way to say thanks to the community for their support, but also lets the EDD students communicate with the younger PLTW students, bringing the whole program together. There is a deadline for each student to have 5 hours of volunteer work completed by Friday. Not only is everyone on track to reach this goal, but some students have far surpassed the requirement. For example, Brad Collyer has already completed 18 hours!




Thursday, December 1, 2011

Puzzled, Inc.



In addition to the other fundraising activities we are currently working on, a new one is in progress. Yesterday, after school a couple of students met and discussed this new project with Mr. Gallagher. The idea is to order small wooden puzzles like the one shown above from the company Puzzled, Inc. After we receive the puzzles we plan to reverse engineer them on AutoDesk Inventor and sell the pieces of the puzzles to other schools around the country who are not able to print out their own pieces on laser printers. With these pieces, schools will then be able to modify the puzzles and create their own on Inventor. We also plan to create a website on Shopify.com where we can market our products and sell them to other participating project lead the way schools.

Individual Progress Report Soon


In the upcoming weeks, EDD students will be presenting their work to Mr. Gallagher. This work includes all the research that they have done, any drawings or model's they've made, and what they have made for presentations. This information should be kept in the student's engineering notebook, which will be examined during the meeting. Students will also have a list of goals that they want to complete by the next progress meeting. These meetings will be one-on-one with Mr.Gallagher, and scheduled by the students.