Break it Down and Build it Up

We on the programming team are busy at work building the basis for the program. Part of this includes breaking down existing code for reference. Another 3D printer on the market is the B9Creator - an open source project that uses many of the principals we hope to use in our design. Because it's open source, we're able to see the various methods and algorithms used. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we plan to examine B9Creator's existing code to...

Read More

Subject to Testing

For the past two classes, the materials team has been testing one of our possible resin options on multiple materials in order to see what material the resin best cures to. We cured the resin using sunlight and tested wood(just for data), aluminum, steel, PVC, PMMA, and Lexan. We found that the resin left behind residue on the non-metallic materials and that on aluminum in particular the resin cured strong, but was removed...

Read More

Legalities

In recent activities, the marketing team has continued it's research on 3D Printers, and started finding consumer feedback from 3D printer users. In the past, a lawsuit had been found regarding a patent issue, and because the patent doesn't expire for three more years, it has been a high priority to find a patent lawyer who could assist in confirming that our product would not interfere with any patents and will work pro-bono. We have contacted...

Read More

Is Two Better than One?

Today in class we debated and discussed the pros and cons of having two projectors in the machine versus one. Having two projectors would set our machine apart from any other machine and would double the build space available for the user. However, by doing this, we would also be putting the programming team in over their heads with having to convert and rewrite all the necessary algorithms to project the image. Also, we run the risk of having the projector mash up to be even one pixel off, ruining the whole printed file. From the hardware and...

Read More

The Basic Building Blocks, Legos

Over the past two weeks the Elementary Engineering group has been working on creating mock lessons to demonstrate to teachers how engineering can be integrated with common core standards. The mock lessons that we are creating are for the fourth grade lego pilot classroom at  Geyser Road  Elementary School. We have assessed the fourth grade curriculum and have planned two pilot lessons. One lesson integrates English and Engineering. This...

Read More

User Friendly

The software team has completed some objectives, and we are now looking through code of an existing open source project to see if there is anything we can improve on, and researching how we can get stepper motors to work with our printer . We are also making a custom user interface that is designed for touch screen. The image seen to the right is the interface we have been designing, using circle buttons to make the the objects on the interface...

Read More

Divide and Conquer

The build team has been split up into two groups to help maximize the efficiency of our work. The first group is dedicated to creating a prototype of our printer on Autodesk Inventor. The second group is in charge of figuring out the actual materials needed for the machine and then purchasing them. The materials team has just purchased a projector to test, some resin, Z table material, and Sylgard 184 (a nonstick coating substance). Once we acquire...

Read More

It's Elementary!

A chronic shortage of engineering students threatens America’s role as one of the world’s leading innovators. Without bright young minds preparing to solve the problems of tomorrow, our country is left without a diverse group of critical thinkers to resolve pressing issues. In addition, countries such as China and India have far surpassed the quality (engineers with advanced degrees and patents) and volume of engineers that America produces. With...

Read More

Evaluating the Market

The marketing team is working hard on researching and understanding pros and cons of certain features of the B9 creator and Formlabs Form 1 machine. Through the use of forums, we can see what current users are boasting about as well as added features they wish the printer could have. This information allows the build team, especially, to have a better understanding of what should be included in our printer. Also, the marketing team is researching the...

Read More

An Electronic Update

The electrical team has just started working on the electronics subsystem of the printer.  As the electronics team, we have to work closely with the build and programming team to make sure our system will integrate with both the hardware and software designs.  We’ve already created a list of constraints and goals for our part of the final design, as well as a list of major parts that we have to order and use in the final product.  We...

Read More

Behind the Scenes in the Machine

The software team is currently researching the software and computer chip we will use to build the prototype. We are looking at different graphics libraries to use and are planning to reverse engineer the rapid prototyping software. The computer chip we plan on ordering is the BeagleBone Black, which runs on Linux. For the project, it seems that most of the programming will be in python, a coding language. As a form of communicating outside...

Read More

Scaling Down

One of the large parts we want to keep in mind for the printer is the size of the machine. We need to make it a reasonable size to increase the marketability of it as a product the average consumer could have. Our target is to keep the length of the printer under 1.5 ft. We have found a smaller DLP projector to use and will not be using a mirror system to project the image onto the resin which will also scale down the size. Knowing these size...

Read More

The Build Board

To help stay organized throughout the course of the year, the build team has set up two different "Build Boards" to help keep us on track. The first board is strictly for any ideas regarding the project. The ideas can be anything under the sun and will stay on the board for us to keep in mind during the year. Currently our ideas include little things about what we might want the machine to be able to do. The next board is a "to-do" list which will...

Read More