Week of 10/27 - 10/31

This week I worked on multiple projects. The first one I focused on was my poster project. Previously, I printed out a few prototypes for a bearing holder that would allow my stars to spin. These "holders" were essentially just covers for the bearing that did not stay in place unless they were held in place. So to fix this, I redesigned both the stars and bearing holder to snap into place so the two sides don't have to be held together manually. These new sides for the bearing fit perfectly together and still allow the bearing to spin in between the two sides.

I printed out the bearing holder to test it out, and it worked great. However, after doing this, I realized that it isn't exactly a great way to make the stars on my poster spin because I would have to design a different star to go around the bearing so it can actually spin. I realized that this was not what I wanted for my design and decided to make some changes to the stars in CAD so they would have a spinning mechanism similar to the one for the bearing cover, but without using the actual bearing to spin the star. I talked to Mr. L about this new design and was able to make some minor changes to my design, but I have not completed the new design yet.

The second project I worked on was the design of a new Breaking Boundaries sign. My friend from our electrical shop, Aileen, came to me with this project. She wanted me to redesign this sign, which is currently made out of acrylic, and make it out of metal instead. This project is relatively simple. I was able to find a stencil font that was pretty similar to the one used for the original sign and put that into a CAD model. I had to split the sign into two different pieces because the sign is too big for the water jet to cut out all in one piece. So after it is cut out, Metal Fab will weld the two sides together, and the sign can be hung up. I plan to cut out the sign on Friday.

Lastly, Mr. Christy came to Bella, Kim, and me with another map project, similar to the one we did last year. This year, we're making a bigger map to go along the top windows of the main office. This map will display the total distance of the miles walked by students and teachers in a single route that traverses state borders. Bella, Kim, and I all went to measure the windows of the office where this map would go so that Mr. Christy could order the map that we need to design for the project.