In the past few weeks, EYE has effectively launched the first sessions of the second year of Dorothy Nolan’s LEGO Club and has continued to support Division Street’s STEM Club. As the December 6th Saturday “Engineering Athletics” Program approaches, we have continued to plan and finalize arrangements with the local community. With the event already full, we expect to have a successful outcome. The students are very excited to participate and the parents and teachers are eager to make this event a special one. Shenendehowa currently is being aided by EYE for their Saturday Program in January and EYE is also helping Ballard Elementary school plan their upcoming Saturday Program on December 13th. Our future schedule includes planning for our 2015 Saturday Programs and continuing to expand and aid schools with Saturday Programs and LEGO Clubs. We are also planning to start the process of becoming a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and continue to excite the young engineers of the future!
Thursday, November 20, 2014
We are
in the process of brainstorming specific applications for the engine.
Some ideas include using the engine in a car to capture waste heat from the car’s
engine, and capturing waste heat from industrial ovens. We have been modeling different engines on
Autodesk Inventor and picked one to prototype. We dimensioned the pieces
to fit size and functionality parameters. We started building the prototype
from various materials, including plastic, wood and metal. The pieces were cut using the laser cutter, ensuring measurements are precise. An initial prototype would serve to produce much needed data on potential efficiency and load bearing capabilities for Nitinol engines. After a short time, it became evident that the materials we chose for the prototype were inadequate. Flimsy plastic parts left too much room for error. We decided to build a more professionalized prototype, sacrificing time and energy for a more quality product. This would hopefully have been worthwhile, making our lives easier during testing, and making our data more accurate. We came up with more potential sturdier adaptations of our design, each with varying levels of complexity. Unfortunately, after reaching out to professionals in the Nitinol community, we came to find our initial interpretation of the patent was inaccurate. Nick, our project manager has found a credible collection of research information. Today in class he gave our group a PowerPoint presentation, bringing everyone up to speed on some more complex Nitinol concepts. The source discusses many heat engine designs in depth, including the one we prototyped. After finding our prototype to be incorrectly designed, we regroup, continue to do more research, and for now we have put the prototype on the backburner.
The year is
off to a great start in EDD, the class has gone through a series of steps
necessary in bringing about the beginnings of a successful project. Students have voted, electing their
classmates to reside over certain responsibilities for the class. Among these positions are treasurer, project
manager, blog coordinator, and fundraising coordinator. Nick Abate has been elected project manager,
Emily Verhag will be our treasurer and Eric Von Alman will be overseeing
fundraising. After conducting elections,
we presented and researched the feasibility of ideas initially brought into the
class as part of EDD's application requirement.
After some deliberation, the class settled on the design of a Nitinol Heat Engine. Nitinol is a Nickel-Titanium alloy, with
super elastic and shape memory properties. \These properties may be exploited, wherever a temperature
differential is present in order to convert waste heat into electrical
energy. Since making the decision to go with Nitinol, the class has split into thirds. While one group will pursue Nitinol and another will continue EYE, the last is still contemplating different ideas. Serious consideration has been given to innovations in the way of RFID technology, but the group is keeping their minds open to other ideas.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
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Our final showcase will be held at Saratoga Springs High School (in the Teacher's Auditorium) at 5:30 pm on Tuesday June 17th. Further information and directions to the TA can be found on the new page titled "Final Showcase"
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Now that the end of the year is rapidly approaching, the Educating Young Engineers team is working to finish strong and tie everything together. We are hosting another Saturday Engineering Program at the high school on June 14, titled “Engineering Athletics” that will demonstrate the parallels between problem solving and sports. We have been given great support for this program from the Engineering Design and Development class and will share the proceeds from the program with the EDD team. In addition the Yearbook committee is contributing a significant amount of volunteers so we will also be making a donation to the yearbook committee. Overall we are very excited for our upcoming program! We are also working hard on our final presentation. We will be doing a presentation on all of our accomplishments on June 17th at the Technology Showcase Night, and are looking forward to hopefully seeing lots of excited young engineers from our programs at the big presentation. We are also looking towards the summer, and making plans for what we will accomplish before the start of next year, so that EYE can hit the ground running in the 2014-15 school year.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
With our new printer design almost completed, the electronics team is working hard at installing all our components into the machine. This includes soldering wires together, hooking parts up, and screwing in our electronics to the wall. We centralized most of our voltage supply wires onto one circuit board, which can fit right onto our Arduino. In addition, we discovered a way to control our power supply unit directly with our on-button, which eliminates the need for more complicated wiring.
Although this will likely be our final design for the school year, we look forward to continuing our work on the printer over the summer, where we will hopefully improve it with even more electronics and hardware.
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