EDD Takes GE

This past Thursday, General Electric Research and Development was kind enough to offer the InvenTeam the opportunity to tour their buildings. We mainly toured their rapid prototyping, and 3D manufacturing facilities. The class first met with two mechanical engineers, working with medium sized resin and polymer-based printers, much bigger than machines like the MakerBot, yet still manageable. These engineers allowed us to ask questions, and showed...

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Saturday Engineering Program

This January was a very busy month for the Educating Young Engineers group! Our most amazing accomplishment was filling up all ONE- HUNDRED slots for our premier Saturday Engineering Program! A major priority of the EYE group has been organizing all aspects for our Engineering Day. We have been working to plan out all of the modules that the participants will go through. We have decided on a Wind Tunnel, a Marshmallow Catapult, a Toothbrush...

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Charlie's Personality

As part of our marketing strategy, we want each printer to be unique. We want individuals to build a personal connection with their machines, as exemplified by our use of names such as "Charlie". To accompany the various names and personalities of our printers, we have designed our software to have different color schemes, some of which are pictured above. These color schemes will match the paint job on the robot. In addition to changing colors,...

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A Z-Table in Z-Making

For the z-table we have been working to improve our initial z-table design which consisted of a removable U-shaped z-table surrounding a box that was permanently connected to the printer.  Our goal was to lighten up this design, decrease the build space to fit the aspect ratio of the projector, create a sturdy set-up that will allow for precise printing, and have an easier way to detach the z-table from the printer.   We have...

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Time to CR8!

Introducing... Charlie CR8, the name of the EDD class of 2014's 3D printer! Why is Charlie so special? Due to our goal of creating a personal machine, we have decided that Charlie is the best name for our final product. For every printer we sell, our consumer is going to receive a uniquely named product. To keep from confusion however, they all will end in CR8 (create), because it's the family's last name. We wanted our 3D printer to stand...

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Mid-Year Presentation

A big thanks to the Bechtel engineers who came and listened to our mid-year presentations this evening. Bechtel has consistently been one of our biggest sponsors, so we were very excited to have representatives visit us and give us feedback on our projects. For this evening's presentation, each group made a presentation detailing what they have been doing from the beginning of this year to now, our half way point. Not only did our presentation...

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Taking the Next Steps

Progress in the electronics field is moving steadily forward. Despite a few broken microchips, we have successfully ran the stepper motor with a simple "blinking" program, and will soon begin to test its functionality with more specific inputs. With our ultimate objective being to adjust our z-table with this stepper motor, integration into the machine prototype (along with some tough number-crunching) will be our next step after testing. With...

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Ready, Set, Slice!

One of the crucial elements of a 3D printer's software is the process of taking a 3D model file (usually in the form of a .stl file), and figuring out how to go about printing each layer. Since we're going to be projecting UV light onto resin to create thin layers of polymer, we need to generate cross sections of whatever we're printing. This process is known as slicing. We've utilized some existing libraries to handle some of the heavy mathematical...

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Reflecting on Progress

Today was a busy day for the Build Team as our deadline draws near to finish up the physical construction of our first prototype. New parts were printed using the laser cutter and team members began to piece together some of the last components of Prototype 1. Additional research was also done on the UV filter in the projector, which will be crucial for the machine to print. However, this isn't the only roadblock we have found with the projector....

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