It has been 4 years since we last competed in the Cardboard Canoe races, and while we had a very sturdy boat, it was almost too sturdy. It tipped over too easy because if floated so well and was not easy for our students to control. Those freshmen who built the canoe are now seniors and are working on a new boat for this years races. Our shop has 2 entrants a senior team and a junior team. It’s exciting to see their work, and to see how far our shop has come in providing our students with the tools to make these incredible objects. A few photos below of the construction process. The event is June 12th, and I will post more info as we approach the date.
Not sure why I have been so enamored with making bluetooth radios lately. My original Pi Radio still is not complete, but it’s a bit out of my hands at the moment. I purchased an old Rogers radio from England and converted it into a bluetooth radio, and it works very well. In addition to that I wanted to make my own radio using our lasercutter here in the shop and create everything in a CAD model. Today I was finalizing an updated version for my father, which includes a newly designed circuit board that is modeled in the CAD file. The new board adds a couple of diodes to help with interference from the battery pack, which was affecting the sound. I will post a more detailed writeup on the construction of the radio, but for now here are a few photos from today.
While I’m still getting over the thrill of having a new Tesla to play with, the shop was focused on getting some CNC Router cuts executed today. Seniors Daniel and Lucas have been designing speaker boxes. The boxes are quite particular, using parameters within Fusion 360 to control volume specific to the different speaker dynamics. I wrote about it more specifically earlier this year in this post.
Today we began the first cuts of the Fusion 360 files. We exported the files from Fusion as DXFs and then imported them into VCarve. We created multiple cutting paths for different heights and types (pockets v profiles) and set the Atlas router to work. Below are a few images of the process. We will have more to show next week.
Our sophomore students have begun their SumoBot project. This project teaches students how to design and build their own custom autonomous robots. The goal is to have two robots compete in a circular ring and try to push the other one out the ring. The robots can only be turned on, they are not actively controlled by their creators. The function of the robots must be coded and allow the robots to work fully autonomously. For my end, I added some design tutorials for students to create their own 3D printed casters and wheels for the robots. The caster is a simple holder for a ball bearing, while the wheel is a rim to hold a thick rubber tube. A few photos below of the CAD and actual objects.
Wanted to showcase a few projects that are happening in the shop right now. The first is from one of our sophomores, Shubh P ’24, who took the design on on his LED Light Box to another level. Shubh has put a lot of attention to detail in his project from CAD to circuitry. He introduced several types of circuitry components to the design, which include potentiometers as dials, 7 segment display, and pushbutton switches. In addition, he utilized different sized wood in his CAD model to create patterns within the framework of the structure of the box. It really turned out well. Unfortunately, when taking photos of it today, there was a minor glitch in the coding, so he is going to fix the issue and I will post some more photos below.
In addition to the light box, Prince A ’23 is working on updating an older project from a previous student, a bluetooth speaker. The circuitry for the project is being modernized, as is the speaker box. Below you can see some test fitting of speakers in cardboard.
And lastly, Clark B ’23 and Daniel R ’22 are working on getting our traffic light fully functioning. Clark has been making circuit boards on our Bantam Tools mill and writing code to make the light work in unison with the school’s bell system. You can see his array of relays below in blue. Daniel has designed a connector to fit the traffic light on an old tv stand. We decided to print the connector out of a carbon fiber filament for strength, and after some trial and error, we are pretty happy with the final result. You can see it below in black.
