Week of Feb 11

We are continuing the structural analysis with beam calculations and, ultimately, selecting the beams to be used in a given design.

This is the last week of the six weeks, so make sure that you are up to date on all of your assignments.  To help with that, Wednesday will be a WOW day.  Make sure to get a WOW pass from any of your teachers for whom you need to make up or redo work.  There is no late start on Thursday, however.

Since this is the last week of the six weeks, I will do a journal check this week. Make sure that your journals are up to date and left in the room so that I can access them for grading.

Don't forget that next Monday (Feb 18) is a student holiday.  I hope that you enjoy your 3 day weekend.

3d Printing Challenge Update
The IMAPS conference for this month has been postponed, so the time pressure is off.  However, we are going to continue the challenge. If you are interested and have not signed up yet, there is still time.  Go to this link and give me contact information so that I can let you know when information comes out.  We will assemble a kit of parts that you can use and give to each team that will include an LED light, watch battery and battery holder, and some amount of ink.  Each team will experiment with the ink and the printer to vet out various approaches and then select the one that they feel has the best chance of success.  Then, you will design with that approach in mind, evaluate and even redesign. Remember that your design not working doesn't mean the project didn't succeed.  We are exploring territory here that hasn't been developed yet, so knowing the pitfalls and problems is in itself a success.  Check out the history of the rocket industry.  Today, we send humans and equipment in to space with regularity, but the industry spent years and years in "failure" as rocket after rocket exploded or rose a few feet in the air and then sank back and crashed back in to the ground.  After each failed attempt, the teams analyzed what went wrong and solved the problems - one at a time - to create the scientific and engineering success that we all know today.

We will start meeting weekly with the Novacentrix engineers and possibly others to exchange knowledge.  They will be able to share with us their knowledge of the conductive ink, and we will share with them our findings about how it interacts with the 3d printing materials and process.