Engineering Design Workshop 2012

In July of 2012, The Edgerton Center hosted the annual Engineering Design Workshop. The program brings in high school students from around the world to work in teams on a project of their choice. This year the program had 24 kids and 6 mentors, which turned out to be a pretty good ratio. In addition to the mentors, the workshop had Ed Moriarty and John McGoldrick as general overseers and sources of infinite wisdom.

Ed talking with the kids on the first day

 My group decided to make an autonomous vehicle with the final goal of having it deliver caffeinated beverages to Ed. This goal was never completely achieved, but the wall-avoiding robot we ended up with worked well and everyone involved gained valuable experience.

A few photos along the way:

Yashasvi sitting on David's group's project

People doing things with stuff

Ed skyping in from Alaska for design review and updates

JDOB/UAF/ASRA says hi!

John the shop safety specialist

my first steering assembly

Rolling chassis

Intermediate step: RC vehicle

After staring at the vehicle for a few hours we discovered that unnamed student
had used digital pins when he should have used analog pins

Making the vehicle 'safer'

Battleship group

Single-fan hovercraft group

Batmobile group and the resulting tricycle

Dual-fan hovercraft group

Autonomous vehicle group

And so another Engineering Design Workshop came to a close and some of us went back to a normal sleep schedule and some did not. At the same time as the workshop, three of the six mentors (Jackie, David, and myself) were also preparing to test an underwater glider in Alaska and left for testing the day after the workshop ended. I'll post about that in a few days when I sort through the thousands of photos and videos that were taken on the trip. In the meantime, here's a preview:

$50,000 ROV catches dinner

End Year Post: Aurora Bearealis

Happy New Year, everyone! I'll spare the little details, but boy, 2011 was quite an adventure. A year ago I would have never thought I'd be where I am now, and it's still amazing to me how lucky I've been.

Goals for 2012:

1) Create something new that has the potential to improve someone's lifestyle
2) Do something that is universally regarded as "totally awesome, dude"

(Goals may be changed, removed, or added over the course of the year)

On to the engineering part of the post:

The past week was incredibly hectic. Ed Moriarty is headed to Alaska on Tuesday to promote interest in science and engineering in young kids. To help him achieve this goal, I designed and mass-produced what he calls "Aurora Bearealis" which combines the Aurora Borealis (northern lights) with UAF's Aurora Bear logo.

Over the past 96 hours, I've spent about 50 of them at the Edgerton Center making this project come to life. I've also consumed about a pound of boneless chicken wings and a whole pizza. That's not a lot for four days of food, but then again I really didn't find time to eat. Big thanks to Ed, Tommy, Bruno, Kenny, and the several drop-ins who took an interest in the project and helped in any way they could. Here are a few shots that were taken when I wasn't CADing or eating.

A tricky part to cut efficiently.

Approximately 150 full assemblies. In a box.

A video of the final product. Turn down your volume; the video was taken in the laser room with ventilation going at full blast.

After several days of dreaming in vector format spending more time at MIT than at home, we cranked out over 190 full assemblies, which, as I said earlier, took about two full days' time. This includes transport, setting up parts to cut in AutoCAD, cleaning machines, preparing materials for cutting, establishing cut settings, actual cutting, taking materials out of machines, cleaning machines again, testing prototypes, sorting parts, and packing them into sets of 10 or 20. It was exhausting but extremely rewarding. As put by Ed, these bears are going to make a lot of kids in Alaska really happy because they now have a really cool night light during the darkest time of the year, and the kids can say "I made that!"

TL;DR I am now one with the laser cutters in 3-402.