Working Overtime

Today, half of the build team got together and did a little extra work for our skeleton prototype. No session is complete without a trip to home depot, roaming the isles aimlessly looking for bolts, wood, and nails. After purchasing all the things we needed, we got to work. Although we didn't have all the tools needed to work, we made headway on our Z table and on a DIY vacuum former. The vacuum former will be used to help the process of molding...

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Mounting Suspense

The AutoCad team has completed the first milestone! The preliminary prototype drawings were due on November 20th and the team had them done just in time. Since the prototype drawings are now completed, the build team came together once more, only to split off again into various partnerships to work on different aspects of the prototype. These groups have the tasks of working on: a Z mock-up with parts, the machine base, resin pool, and projector...

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All Eyes on EYE

Throughout the month of November the Educating Young Engineers (EYE) group has been working to gain funding to optimize the elementary engineering programs that we are establishing. In early November we were asked by Kara Rosettie to give our “Why LEGO” presentation at the Dorothy Nolan HSA meeting. The presentation was a great success and the parents and teachers were very excited to be piloting the LEGO Club in their school. As...

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Software Progress

Over the past few months,  the software team has made exceptional progress. We have added many features to the user interface such as a file chooser, a custom spin control for touch applications, and a gear generator. The gear generator takes in user parameters and then can determine the exact shape of a gear with various types of teeth. With this feature, we hope this that this will now help to both improve ease of use for basic things and...

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A Sticky Situation

Recently, the focus of the materials subset of the build team has been developing an auto-refill system. The team has spent a lot of time testing a peristalsis pump in order to efficiently use left over resin in an automatic refill system. The pump is hooked up to a power supply and by reversing the motor, can easily transfer liquids from one area to another, something ideal for an auto-refill and drainage system. The strongest...

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Fundraising, Food, and Fun

On November 4, we had our first successful fundraiser for the Saratoga Inventeam! This was held at 99 Restaurant who allowed us to have 15% of the proceeds from the bills of people who came in with one of our fliers. Also, to raise extra money, many local companies donated items for raffle baskets that we raffled off that night. It was so fantastic to see local Saratoga business's helping us out in reaching our end goal. Overall, the event...

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Keeping the Current Flowing

In the past month, the electrical team has made terrific progress. All of the parts we ordered have arrived and they have all been working smoothly. With this step now done, we have started some prototyping. In conjunction with the build team, we have built a setup that will allow the stepper motor for the z-table to move. We will be able to run this set up when the programming team creates and debugs the code to move the motor as desired....

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Coding Bubbles

In order to make three dimensional printing accessible to a wide range of people, the programming team is working on making software that is both powerful and intuitive. In addition to working on a desktop computer, like most 3D printer software, we want our software to be able to run on the touchscreen embedded in our printer. In order to make an application that was touchscreen friendly, we needed to make menu systems beyond those available...

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A Beagle Without Bark or Bite

Our electrical team has finally gotten hold of a BeagleBone Black, a type of microcontroller that will act as our machine's Central Processing Unit (CPU). Over the next few months, our work will involve connecting motors and peripheral devices (motors, sensors) to the BeagleBone and syncing them up with each other. This will require research into microcontroller programming, field testing the devices, and a lot of collaboration with the build and...

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CAD Team, Assemble!

The CAD Team has been making very steady progress. Over the past few classes, we have been discussing more design ideas regarding the automatic refill/ draining system. Seeing as it was an idea that came about very early while brainstorming, we have recently gone back and evaluated its feasibility and whether this would be a beneficial innovation. After discussion with the rest of the Build Team, we decided that we are going to implement it into...

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Going LEGO

The past two weeks have been very exciting for the elementary engineering group! On Wednesday October 23, we met with the teachers who are participating in the LEGO engineering at Geyser Road Elementary School and trained them on how to use the LEGO WeDo kits and software. With the teachers trained and equipment ready we kick started the LEGO program on October 30th. The LEGO engineering session went amazingly and the students announced that LEGO...

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Making Progress

Due for today, each group had to create a progress report detailing their groups accomplishments, research, and challenges. It was interesting to reflect on what one month of work has brought us to. Looking at all the research we have already completed, it isn't hard to tell why we've made the progress we've made. Of course, there is still a long way to go as we tackle all the challenges covered in this month's progress report write-up. Also, the...

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