Hello everyone,
As the semester draws to a close, students are scrambling to study for finals and finish major projects. The 3D Lab is the perfect hang-out place for students of any discipline, whether it’s using the 3D printers and vinyl cutter, doing homework, having pizza parties, or just hanging out. It is a beautiful thing to see everyone coming together to share ideas and work on projects together, academic or not. That is what makerspaces are all about! We are so thankful to the donors who made this environment possible.
The highlight of last week’s activity was the egg drop project. Engineering students designed a number of contraptions to allow raw eggs to safely drop from the top of a building without splattering their contents. While most devices were successful, there were still plenty of splatters, too.
Some students used drinking straws to cushion the fall, a popular design idea.
Our own Chris from T.S.S., a budding aerospace engineer, built a rendition of the Osprey aircraft to safely deliver the egg to mother earth. His plane uses 3D printed parts to mount its vertical propellers that act as a floating mechanism.
Earlier in the semester, Dusty designed a replacement coffee mug lid for the Dean, as his cap was cracked and unusable. The draft version fit well, but when acetone vapor was applied to smoothen the layers, the lid shrunk from the process. Dusty made design improvements, scaled the lid larger, then printed the final product. It fits beautifully now!
The blue ring was made by stopping the printer in mid-print, switching filament to another color while the plastic was still malleable, then resuming printing.
This was another big week for our engineering students, the Battle Bots Tournament! Students create robots that compete by pushing competitors from a round platform by any means necessary. Some robots use brute force, others use creative ways to disable their opponents before sending them to oblivion. It was a fun event to bring everyone together for fun and mayhem.
Follow the link below to a wonderful story, courtesy of Paul Locher, about a couple of our students that ran on the front page of the Living section of Sunday’s Daily Record. If you have the time, you may want to check out the hard copy in the library, as it is more visual.
See how 3D printing makes it possible for a man to build a mechanical bird that flies by actually flapping its wings! It’s a sight to behold:
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/12/mechanical-bird-actually-flies-by-flapping-its-wings/
Until next week,
Tom