Creative Motion

Today the class had the privilege of having Paige Edwards come in and present on her life with a prosthetic and problems that she has run into with her prosthetic, and recommendations for where to go in the design in the future. After the presentation, class chugged along and hand group delved into introducing motors to the hand, and starting from scratch to make something unique and functional, forgetting the current design of the hand. Based...

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Print Success

We have printed our first successful redesigned hand! The second hand is heading to print and will be ready for assembly next class. Next step is for a group to test and compare the redesigned hand to the E-Nable hand. EYE had a very successful program this past weekend! 128 kids were exposed to engineering ideas and worked hands-on with projects that involved natural disasters. Today they reflected on the program and what they can do next time. Paul's...

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Collaboration Station

Paul's Group holds discussion with Mr. Gallagher Starting the week off on a strong note, EYE is testing the different station activities before Saturday's program. While registration continues to fill, organizing groups and volunteers are the last tasks to complete. Cam, Andrew, and Hannah's group's redesign has been sent to the 3-D printer. The rest of the groups have been divided to tackle the hand in chunks, not as a whole redesign. The groups...

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Building Up

Quick update! Today, the smaller hand groups showed their new design ideas to the rest of the groups. All initial redesigns are finished and printing has begun. Groups are working on their second redesign. Paul's group is on codeacademy.com learning how to code in Python and Swift in preparation for their project. EYE did a write-up explanation of each station for their Saturday program rapidly approaching. Everything is moving along smoothly...

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Printing Progress

EYE continues ordering supplies for their upcoming Saturday program, and today they organized their bank account. The hand group is finalizing the Inventor designs of their redesigned hand. Groups race to print the first successful redesigned hand as the deadline approaches. Paul's group presented the competing technologies and next class they will finalize their problem statement. ...

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Chugging Along

Paul's Group organizes a presentation Before the Thanksgiving break, Paul's group researched existing technologies that may interfere with their project ideas. Over break, they will prepare a presentation to give to the class on their research. With this presentation, the class will see their progress and the group will have a more in depth idea of what the solution cannot be, and where they could possibly go in the future. Hand design has been...

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Moving Forward

Today the hand design group is focusing on redesigning the hand and making their new designs on Inventor. Using the open source files from eNable, we are hoping to have three different designs for the hand by the end of next week. All groups are close to beginning to print out their designs. The EYE group is ordering supplies for their natural disaster activities, where students will be able to see the effects of natural disasters. Paul's group...

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Update 10/27/15

This Saratoga student has a hand, but that doesn't mean he can't wear ours. Paul and Mr. Gallagher discussed plans for the lock. Today we finally took our quizzes on the presentations so our productive time was shorter, however, we still managed to get some tasks done. The hand group printed out another hand in full size that we will ship out soon. The hand group also got some more emails sent out to doctors and will got some meetings...

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Update 10/24/15

Yesterday was an exciting class for both groups. Our project manager Max selflessly postponed our quizzes which allowed everyone to get a lot done. In the hand group, Ross, Cameron, Gray and Adam worked on one of the 3D printers and are preparing a hand to send out to Enable. Andrew and Reese emailed twelve doctors to see if we could meet with them to talk about our prosthetic hands and to find out what issues are with current prosthetic hands. Steve and Jackson continued to do research and come up with ideas for the project. Hannah, Maddie and...

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Update 10/21/15

What a time to be alive. Today was a very exciting day for the EDD class. Both groups have now finished their initial presentations and are getting started on their real work. Now, the groups are making quizzes to test the knowledge of what people know from the presentations, particularly the one on the human hand. A few members of the hand group also doing research on orthopedic surgeons to ask them questions related to prosthetics. The...

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Update 10/15/2015

The hand group is hard at work getting a quality control hand made.Things are heating up as we finish up initial research and get ready to really get our projects started.In the key group, Paul and Lucas are hard at work creating the presentation on issues with the hand project and areas of the field that have already been worked on. Nick and Jake continue research on lock and key technology. Eli has largely finished his presentation and focused...

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Update 10/13/15

Paul and his key group.The hand group is busy fixing their 3D printer.One of our beautiful 3D printers.Uh oh.This is what troubleshooting looks like.Getting to work.Our chief financial officer.Today in EDD, we continued work on our presentations and got most of them done.The key group, Paul in particular, is planning to decimate the hand group when we present on issues with their project (and vice versa). That, however, is a story for next post....

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Update 10/8/15

This is what engineering looks like.As you can probably tell from the above photos, today was an especially productive day. Ross created a Twitter account for the class, @sshsedd2016 (same for Instagram), and both groups made progress in their research.Here in the lock and key group, Paul and Lucas are researching competitors to the Enable hand, such as partially 3D-printed robotic prosthetics (or bionics, if you will). At last check,...

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Update 10/6/2015

Here in the EDD class, we are hard at work on our new projects.Today's Hand Report comes from Adam. After a weekend meeting with Joey from Enable, the hand group has begun printing test hands and will be sending one of them to Enable for quality control. Ross is working on making our class an official chapter of Enable. Gray has been designated as the "3D printer master" and Adam is working on general research. The rest of the hand group is working on either a presentation on hand anatomy, or patent checking for the key group.The lock and key group...

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Groups Form, Research Begins

Our EDD class has split into two groups. One group is working on the prosthetic hand project and the other is working on the contact chip key project. Both groups are just beginning research and the hand group has begun 3D-printing an existing model hand.Here in the PR department, we have enlisted Adam Bollinger as the writer for the prosthetics group and Gray Morrison as photographic assista...

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Keys, Hands, and MagLev Cars: The 2015-16 EDD Class Begins

The school year has started and the 2015-16 Engineering Design and Development class is getting down to business. At last count there are 21 students in the class. We elected Max Pawlick as Project Manager, Reece Napierski as Chief Financial Officer, and Eli Fisher, myself, as Public Relations Officer. Mr. Gallagher also appointed Andrew deVries to help the rest of the class with our collaboration software, Central Desktop. We have seen a huge array of project ideas presented with costs ranging from a few dollars per unit to several thousand. Some...

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The End of the AutoGarden

Time has come and passed, decisions have been made, both tactical and strategically, the end is near, and according to some, according to the very, very select few who know what they are talking about, it has been said, that the time for the Auto-Garden subset of EDD class, is now, and the shining sun beyond the horizons of the presentation, is nothing but imminent victory.  We have successful integrated our electronics with our microcontroller,...

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Nitinol Final Update

The Stirling engine group has been hard at work. We have finalized our design.A brief overview of the flow of energy that makes our machine work: The wasteheat leaving the car's combustion engine causes the Stirling engine to run. Thisthen creates electrical energy that goes to the charge controller. The energyflows from the charge controller to a battery, charging the battery. The energythat leaves the battery goes to the power inverter where it is converted fromdirect current to alternating current. Alternating current enables us to powerour...

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End of the year - in the words of our Fearless Leader

 Throughout this year, our team has achieved more than I could've imagined we would.  The development of an eco-friendly car heater, the creation of an autonomous garden, and the expansion of last year's Engineering Young Engineers(EYE) have all taken place in this year's class. At the start of the year we made up two separate groups, the continuation of EYE and what we called the nitinol group. After consideration, we split into three groups, EYE, the Auto-garden group, and the Stirling Engine group.     In EYE, we have...

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Wednesday April 15th, Nitinol

In the hydroponics group we are currently moving on with our second phase design. This design will be a lamp that will be designed to grow an orchid hydroponically.  Building this product will be the culmination of our entire year and will require us to use everything we have learned over the course of this project.  In this design, the electronics, nutrient solution, and pump will all be located in a modified flower pot.  At the rim of this pot we will put our flood-drain table which will support the orchid.  We purchased...

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March 26th EYE

Educating Young Engineers has continued work on their March 28th “Engineering Athletics” Saturday Program at Ballard Elementary. Registration is almost full and all preliminary logistics have been completed to ensure the success of another program in our partnership. Ballard Elementary’s first LEGO Club session is drawing to a close after many weeks of teaching the young engineers through problem based and teamwork challenges. During the second session EYE will not be in attendance so that the parents can run the LEGO Club for many years...

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March 19th EYE

EYE is continuing the mission to create interest in STEM fields in elementary students through LEGO clubs and Saturday programs.  EYE is also working with high school students to create an EYE club and working with Dorothy Nolan to integrate WeDo LEGO technology into the fourth grade curriculum.  A new session of LEGO club has started at Dorothy Nolan and EYE continues to support the club in teaching engineering through teamwork and problem solving.  LEGO clubs have also been started at Ballard Elementary...

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March 19th EYE

EYE is continuing the mission to create interest in STEM fields in elementary students through LEGO clubs and Saturday programs.  EYE is also working with high school students to create an EYE club and working with Dorothy Nolan to integrate WeDo LEGO technology into the fourth grade curriculum.  A new session of LEGO club has started at Dorothy Nolan and EYE continues to support the club in teaching engineering through teamwork and problem solving.  LEGO clubs have also been started at Ballard Elementary...

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March 13th, EYE

&nb...

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March 13th, EYE

&nbs...

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March 3rd, Nitinol

The nitinol group has realized that nitinol is extremely difficult to work with, both theoretically and experimentally. We have decided to use a stirling engine instead of a nitinol engine to increase the efficiency of a car. Car engines (internal combustion engines) are at best 20% efficient. The energy that’s not used to make a car move is left over in the form of heat, which exists the car as exhaust. Using a stirling engine, we hope to turn this waste heat into electric energy. Stirling engines have shown to work better than nitinol engines,...

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Mach 3rd, HydroGarden

As a group we recently constructed the walls for our grow-tent by cutting the Panda Film and mounting it on a PVC frame.  We would have liked to have moved past this step by now, but we were forced to special order our PVC fittings due to lack of local availability.  We are juggling our proof of concept model and aesthetically pleasing model, so we were able to keep ourselves otherwise occupied.  For this second model, we are working on designs that will target people in urban areas that wish to grow plants with their...

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Feb. 25 Hydro Garden

   We are currently working to finish constructing the tent with the PVC parts. We will need to be able to regulate fans, pumps, and lights, succeeding in this will require the interfacing of an external timer and our Arduinio Microcontroller.  Components we are using in our system include, a 555 timer, 5v relays  and an LED display to show temperature and time. In the near future, we are going to begin planting the lettuce seeds and do our first round of testin...

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February 13th EYE

Quite a bit has happened with EYE in the past week! On Wednesday we met with representatives from the Ballard Elementary to begin our process of moving forward with their second Saturday Engineering Program, which will be held on March 28th. We have continued work on our February 28th “Music in Engineering” Saturday Program, securing and meeting with our stations leaders as well as beginning to gather our high school volunteers. We were also contacted by professors of education from Skidmore College who were interested...

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February 10th HydroGarden

Lots of progress was made over the weekend.  We have picked up the PVC for our tent and written out the code for the lights, pump and fans.   As we continue moving forward with the build , we also move forward with our conceptual idea.  One thought was that people who live confined areas, might be drawn to low maintenance, aesthetically pleasing  plants.  This would entail reengineering our idea, and replacing practical components like our grow tent, with something less invasive. ...

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February 6th EYE

Educating Young Engineers has been working diligently in preparation for the upcoming  “Music in Engineering” Saturday Program at Saratoga Springs High School. We have completed the distribution of flyers, activity plans and supplies to schools. This Saturday Program will need both teacher and student volunteers to assist the EYE team with each station, this recruiting  process has been initiated and will be completed in the coming week. Dorothy Nolan will be finishing their 3-5 LEGO club on February 11th and their upcoming...

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February 2nd Nitinol

The nitinol group has been working extensively trying to find solutions to the various setbacks we have been facing. We have been brainstorming, and our current idea is to model an engine based on the Minto wheel. We are going to start designing this via sketching and Inventor after we do more research. Our projected Minto wheel design is the most efficient and practical design we have thought of yet. We are also trying to get the 3-D printer in working order so that we can print 3-D parts whenever we need to. We have also been looking into doing...

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Students Engineering a way to a Better Future

Over the past week EYE continued work on planning the next Saturday Program. We began to gather teacher volunteers to lead the various planned stations, reaching out to  faculty from the music department to go along with our “Music in Engineering” theme. Also this week, EYE will officially open registration for our Saturday Program by giving fliers to each elementary school within the district, to be distributed to every student.  To promote this, we have sent out our own invitation to parents whose children participated...

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Pulling for Success

Redirecting our efforts towards Nitinol's application again, we have begun to look for a way to create cheaper, more easily attainable solar energy by combining Nitinol and Solar heater technology.  We have recently ordered an engine and are currently trying to improve upon its pulley system, which we hope, will drastically increase its efficiency. We seek to do this by 3D printing a new pulleys.  These pulleys we have designed in such a way, that friction between the Nitinol and rotating wheel...

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Update on Educating Young Engineers!

EYE is currently working on coordinating future Saturday programs at Saratoga, with the next date set to be February 28 th.  The new programs will have a different theme; music.  Activities and logistics of the program are currently in the development phase.  We aim to create activities that successfully incorporate music into engineering-based challenges, exposing elementary level children to design processes and ideas that they would not otherwise encounter.  We have been working with Shen...

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January 16th 2015, HydroGarden

  Things are really getting underway with our autonomous Hydroponic garden.  Materials are in and building has commenced.  Students scramble back and forth  across the room, the grow-tent is taking shape and programmers are learning new code in order to interface our electronics with Arduino microcontrollers.  Decisions have been made in regards to which electronics we will use, LEDs, pumps, aerators and fans were delivered...

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