Monday, November 22, 2004

This laptop was built in Adobe Illustrator, the vectors were then exported to Corel Painter and the illustrator sketch was rendered.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Midterm project in design problem solving last spring (04). This is a balsa wood bridge with a span of two feet. It is 3in wide at the center and 7.5 on the ends. The glue used was Elmers wood glue. It supported over 60 lbs before it sheared strait down the middle. I wanted to create a space frame stuctured bridge that was going to be as strong as a typical arch/strait beam bridge. 60lbs was the minimum for an A but i still think that the overall design could be improved given the time. The key features are that no single support member is made up of more that two peices of 1/8" balsa strips and that it is wider upon the ends. Overall this is a very good balsa bridge example.
Yet another Design Problem Solving project, this one was an inclass assignment. We were broken up into teams and given a 4'x8' peice of cardboard, two steel rods and four rubber wheels, then asked to build a soap-box racer. Well here it is, no. 7. Not only was ours the fastest in the class but after tha races and several bloodly students helmets gloves and leathers were required for all classes afterwards. In the top corner is a viniet of me getting preped for a race against a fellow classmate.
The Darkness was the name given to this hydrolic arm. It's controled using 6 syringes and an electric motor (rotation). The arm was built out of 1" x 1/2" balsa to keep things light. It had to stack blocks, place a pencil into a hole (shone), put a pool ball on a pedistol, and finally pick up a glass of water and pour it into another. Each event was timed, and we worked in teams. Our arm due to its simplicity took speed records in the block stack and pencil drop.