It was snowing this morning. Hard to believe we are almost in April and there was an inch of snow on the ground soon after I arrived at work this morning. Luckily, it quickly melted in the clear, sunny day that followed the morning.
It’s my week with the Freshmen, and we are focusing on learning CAD. Starting with this new group has allowed me to go over each of my past videos and redo them to make sure the important aspects of the tutorial are being clearly stated. Each time I make a video I think they are getting better. Below is a recent redo of the Soda Bottle.
It was a rather warm day here in New England on Friday, so we opened up the garage door in the machine shop and enjoyed the outside air. A few students were working on projects in the shop, which always makes us seem busy. Clark was putting on some finishing touches for the traffic light project. Just needed to drill some holes in an acrylic sheet to mount some new electronics which make up the internals of the traffic light. With that done, we gave the light a test in the classroom and it performed perfectly. Will post a video of the clock working next week.
In addition to Clark B working on the traffic light, Lucas C and Daniel R were cutting using our Atlas CNC router. The cuts were for speaker boxes they have been working on for several months. It’s exciting to see these finally come to life, and are representative of many hours of test cuts in cardboard on our laser cutter. Hopefully these speakers will be finished in the next few weeks. A short video of work happening in the machine shop today is below.
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.
