Cycling to the Finish Line

Come on down to the Saratoga Cycling Studio to help support your favorite engineers! On Thursday, May 8, there will be a donation spin to help benefit our class! If you click on the link below, scroll over to May 8, and click the donation spin button for 3:30 pm, you can sign up for our class. When you do this, please note that we are collecting donations on the day of the event, and would appreciate $15, but more would be such a great help...

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Prototyping the Circuit

The Electronics Team has been hard at work finishing up the design for the basic circuit.  While we are waiting for the Build team to finish the frame, we are making a setup of all electrical components that will be inside the printer. The piece we have found most recently is the PNP MOSFET, which will allow the circuits to be run at varying voltages. This device (shown above) allows us to power the gate pin, which will in turn allow current...

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Brand Spanking New

Our first print was a great accomplishment, we learned a lot and showed that we were capable of printing a three dimensional part, but we know we can make our printer even better. We completely re-designed the printer to be stronger, more accurate, and more compact. The most drastic change in the design will be size. By orienting the projector vertically instead of horizontally, we can eliminate much of the wasted space our old "box" design....

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A Z-Table-centric Design

Our first print, as many readers know, was relatively successful. However it did reveal problems with the z-table. To print, we improvised on the spot to hold up the heavy z-table structure, but since the z-table was not stable, the design needed to be changed yet again. Over the past week or so we have developed a new design for our printer that works around the issue of our z-table. Our new design has three support points and a more secure locking...

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Fourth Time's the Charm

The build team is beginning work on the fourth prototype. Handles have already been heat formed from acrylic, and AutoCad designs are being created for the rest of the fourth prototype. The fourth prototype will use a second mirror in order to conserve space. Other improvements to be seen in the fourth prototype include a sturdier door and lift supports. The Z table and Z tower will also be redesigned in the new prototype to resolve balance issues...

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First Print: Success!

Our print deadline today, and as everyone scrambled to tie up loose ends, the group thought the outlook on printing today was rather grim. During class, everyone went into overdrive and made more progress than anyone could have imagined. A new Z table got milled out that would have more structural integrity than the one before which was warped. The new acylic base and top were almost finished and hopefully will done for tomorrow...

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Stepping Up to the Plate

Right now the programming team is working on a settings page interface where the user can change certain aspects of the printer, such as the color, and the layer depth. We are also working with the build team to finalize the stepper motor code, for example when it is given an amount of steps it will move that far. Finally, we are also working on code to implement limit switches so the motor does not go out of range, and code for a rotary encoder...

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