This is it!

This has been an incredibly busy week for S-STEM.  Making final touches on my project for the semester, finishing my research paper, and rushing to get my powerpoint done for an early presentation this morning has made for a challenging week.  Anyways, last night my team and I finished applying the Mylar sheeting to the parabolic concentrator.  It was too cloudy yesterday to determine any sort of efficiency that our parabolic concentrator has.  We will be investigating this more tomorrow, depending on the condition of the sky.  Steam generation will also be the goal for tomorrow's efforts.

This afternoon was the first round of powerpoint presentations.  It was great seeing what Matt Hill as been up to all semester, as well as a presentation from one of the new guys and his determining of an unknown bacteria.

This will be my last semester in S-STEM, I will still continue to blog about my parabolic concentrator next semester.

Finals, Papers, and Sunshine OH MY!

The final sprint to the end of the semester has begun.  With only a couple weeks of classes left, I am somewhat relieved, while being simultaneously overwhelmed by the amount of work that is piling up.  I have spent the majority of my efforts this week preparing my research paper for S-STEM, and hopefully I will have the paper and the power point done this weekend.  This week we finished the parabolic trough...finally.  Mylar sheeting has been attached to the frame and we are on course for steam generation for the latter part of next week.

Below are a few photos of the parabolic trough, before attaching the Mylar sheeting to the trough.  The process involved with attaching the takes a few days to complete.  Cleaning the sheet metal with acetone was step one, followed by laying down a layer of primer on the sheet metal.  After the primer dries, it is then wet sanded and another coat of primer is applied to the sheet metal.  After a final sanding, the Mylar sheeting can be applied using glue, and a careful hand when applying the Mylar, as it can dull and scratch quite easily.

Concentrate!

This week was another round of exams making life more difficult than usual, but all in all I think everything went pretty well.  I aced my Differential Equations exam and feel fairly confident about my Calc 3 and Physics exams as well.  In regard to my project, I got to use a new piece of equipment called a shearer.  Basically it cuts large sheets of metal into smaller ones.  The sheets of metal cut will make the parabola of our concentrator.  There are a few shots of the concentrator below with no sheet metal on it, as well as a piece of equipment called "Chicago".  Chicago is the shearer that cut our sheet metal like a hot knife on butter.

METS

Lat Friday our special projects class at SMCC took a trip down to ASU to watch a presentation by the METS department.  METS stands for Motivated Engineering Transfer Students.  They gave us a very in depth look at how to transfer properly as an Engineering student to ASU.  Financial aid, scholarships, and application deadlines were all discussed.  If any of my fellow STEMmers are planning to transfer to Ira Fulton anytime soon, I would definitely suggest going to one of these presentations.

This was especially helpful to me, as I just changed my engineering major to Materials Science Engineering, and had a ton of questions about potential new course requirements.  The METS department put me in contact with an adviser for my new major , which has taken a lot of stress off of my shoulders for this next year.

For my project, my team has been incredibly busy and we will be spending the whole day tomorrow finishing our concentrator.  Pictures will be posted sometime this weekend.

More Progress.

 

This seek we completed the frame for our parabolic concentrator.  Luckily one of the guys on our team is a welder, enabling us to make a metal sub-frame for concentrator.  To do this, we first drew the curve of our parabola on a table.  After the curve was drawn, we then used it as a template to bend the steel rods into place.  Ideally we should have used a tubing bender, but our resources were limited, and we did the best we could with what materials we had.  One of the pictures above shows the "tool" that we used to make our steel parabolas.  To enable adjustments, which will allow us to focus it, we welded little slots onto the steel parabolas.  We tapped the slots, and now using simple bolts we will be able to focus the direction of the parabola in twelve different places.  This weekend we will be fine tuning the parabola, and then we will start on the actual energy generation aspect of this project.

Let there be light.

I am starting to realize that with the loooonger than expected delay to get materials, my semester project is most likely going to span two semesters. That being said we got a solar concentrator up and running.  Before assembling our parabolic concentrator, we wanted to practice applying the mylar sheeting to something.  A Direct TV dish (DeathRay v.1) was used for a proof of concept.  I am really glad that we practiced on something small.  We practically did everything wrong the first time, which significantly decreased the efficiency of the mylar's refectivity. 

Even with the decreased efficiency, our concentrator was able to boil water and set a variety of things on fire.   Death Ray v.2 was assembled early this week.  More preparation and care was taken when applying the mylar to the satellite dish, and the concentrator's efficiency greatly increased.  Water boiled faster and harder, and lit objects on fire faster.  I say we are off to a good start.

Because slow motion makes everything better, here is a slow motion video of our concentrator starting to light a piece of wood on fire.  This was filmed using Death Ray v.1, so the wood never actually catches on fire, but it is still pretty cool.

Finally!

Construction has begun!  This week a lot of progress has been made.  the frame of our parabolic concentrator has been built, and we started making the skeleton of our parabolic trough.  It feels so good that after weeks of purchase order mishaps, everything starts coming together so quickly.  Friday we will take a trip to the metal shop and start fabricating some of the larger pieces of steel that we will need for our concentrator, and maybe we can make a wood template for the parabola to ensure accuracy along the entire trough.  By next week we should be generating steam and (hopefully) powering a steam engine with previously mentioned steam!

Below are a few pictures taken in my friends garage of our activities this week.

Purchase Orders Submitted

Another set of purchase orders have been submitted for our concentrator, and are waiting approval and funding from our instructor.  Tomorrow our team meets again, and I am hoping there with be a big pile of parts for us, or a nice stack of cash, so we can go purchase what is necessary.  Once the parts are in hand this project is going to go pretty smoothly.  The logistics of ordering through the school and a grant funded program is proving to move slower than I would like, but there is nothing that I can do about that.  I feel helpless in this matter, and hopefully come December, I will have a lot of interesting data to present to all of you.

One day this will be mine...

Stay tuned...

We have now entered the first week of October and the project encountered a little delay.  All of the parts we ordered were either damaged in shipping or the quality was not what the manufacturer promised.  We made a collective decision to start from scratch and not rely on others for supplies.  This is a realization that I wish happened earlier, but as one of my instructors told me, if you do fail, fail fast.  We hope to make a quick recovery of this and still plan on having a functioning parabolic concentrator by the end of the semester.  I was really hoping that I was going to have pictures to show off but it doesn't look like that will be happening this week.

Today (Friday) we made a trip to my new favorite store in town.  It is called Industrial Metal Supply.  Anything metal they have, or will fabricate for you.  We have parts sourced for the concentrator and construction can finally begin.

So much metal, so little time.

The heat is on.

This semester I am taking my most academically challenging course load, and I am really starting to feel the pressure this week.  None of the work is incredibly difficult, but it is all incredibly time consuming.  Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day.  My first week of exams went incredibly well, so I have a little relief for a week or two.  In regard to my project.  This is when it all begins!!!  After weeks of calculations, approximations, and order forms....OUR PARTS HAVE STARTED TO ARRIVE!!!  This weekend will be full of building our steam engine, with countless trips to the hardware store,  Assembly shouldn't take more than a week or so, and then after the engine is working, we can spend the remainder of the semester, (with the guidance of our mentors) building a generator that will power a refrigerator and some light bulbs.

Parts ordered and a trip to home depot

Our purchase order was placed this week now we just have to wait for them to show up before this project takes off and starts consuming ALL of my "free time".  Now that we have ordered parts, we are taking a trip to home depot later this week to gather parts so we can start constructing the frame for our parabolic concentrator.  Once that is built the mirror sheeting will be attached to the concentrator frame, and we will begin construction of the steam engine, and hopefully this will be a relatively easy and straight forward process.  Making all of our calculations prior has been a great indicator that this will be a success.  I am not saying there wont be bumps in the road, but I am very optimistic about my project this semester.  In other news my blog has more page views from people in Romania than from my peers in the US.  Gimme some more attention people!!!

Instead of an image this week I have provided a link that will take you to an interactive Parabolic Concentrator that Wolfram has provided.  Certain to be a geeky time waster for most of you!

Wolfram Interactive Parabolic Concentrator

A slight delay...

This past week the parabolic concentrator project was approved by our engineering mentors!!!  I was a little nervous about our proposal that we wrote for this project.  We had to explain the need and prove that this was possible from an engineering and financial standpoint.  I imagine that this is going to be what the workplace is going to be like as a working engineer, so it was good practice.

A member of my team almost backed out this week due to his course load, but he found out that he went passed the add/drop date.  This caused a little delay in ordering our parts.  Tomorrow we will be going to home depot to start building the framework for our parabolic concentrator.  Pics will be posted as soon as we start building.




After this first month of school this is how I feel, oddly enoughI don't feel to bad about it either.

Fingers Crossed.

This week, my team and I have been putting the final touches on the proposal for our project that is due on Friday.  This part of our project is going to be good practice for later.  If I end up doing R&D, and I have an idea for a new product, I am going to need to write a proposal to my boss before I get any money for what I am doing.  This will be my second semester with these mentors, so we know what they are looking for in regard to this proposal.  Hopefully on Friday we will get the green light, and can start ordering parts and making trips to Dome Depot.  If anyone has an old washing machine they don't use let me know.  We might have use for the motor.  The image below is pretty close to the parabolic concentrator model that we drew up in solid works.

Parabolic Concentrator

It was good to see all of you last Friday.  I am looking forward to learning about all of your individual projects!  For my project this semester, my colleague and I have decided to build a parabolic concentrator that will turn a steam turbine and generate electricity.  There are a ton of unknowns this semester, and hopefully this project will be a success.  Our goal is to eventually generate enough electricity to power a single family home (appx. 15kWh).  Most of my time on campus will be spent in the math department, so swing by if you want to talk about anything, school related or not.  Below is a GIF of the steam turbine we will be using for this semester.

Final Push

I hope that most of you are aware that after this week classes are officially over and all that remains to be done are class finals.  If not, SURPRISE!!! It's practically finals week!  I don't know about the rest of you but I have been cranking out the research paper that is due this evening, just to write another ten page engineering analysis of my project for South Mountain CC.  Then, if time permits I can study for next week.  Thanks to the rigorousness of the project at South Mountain my research paper was practically done, I just had to put all of my data into research paper format.  This time of the year is when I think I grow the most new gray hairs.  I can't wait to see the results of everybody's projects tomorrow afternoon.  I feel like I have just gotten a tiny glimpse of each of your projects due to not seeing any of you in lab this semester.  Tomorrow it will all come together for me.  See you then!!!

Found this image to be incredibly helpful this week.  I think I'm going to put it on my desk at home.

blogs.bu.edu

NASA Conference

This week was a pretty mellow week in regard to my semester project.  Our project is complete and we presented our data last weekend at U of A.  You guys will see a version of our powerpoint on May 2nd, or whenever we are presenting out data to the S-STEM group.  From here on out is just going to be ironing out the research paper associated with this class.  There has but a lot of study on this topic, but to my dismay there have not been many articles written on this topic.  I am hoping to find a holy grail of sorts that will lend me all of the supporting information required to complete this paper.

After our presentation last weekend our mentor professors told us that not only were we the rowdiest group they have ever had, but we were also the best.  This made me feel good about my future, that I will not have to sell out and "grow up" to be around a bunch of conservative engineers.  I have always been an individual and plan on continuing that trend.  It is good to know that I can kick some serious butt at something and not be frowned upon for being a goofball to loosen up the group dynamic!

Below is a 60 sec edited video of the balloon's launch!

Symposium Time!!!

Hey Everybody,

After our successful balloon launch a couple weeks ago, we had to hurry and put together a powerpoint and data analysis for the National Space Grant Symposium at U of A this Saturday.  It seems like this entire semester it has just been one thing after another.  I feel like I am never caught up.  To make matters more complicated, I just found out that a rough draft for our research papers are due tonight!  Good thing it is just a rough draft, and all of my data analysis/questions/abstract has already been completed for the purpose of my own project.  To give you guys a an idea of what my data looks like, I have some VERY beautiful excel graphs that show our data analysis.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Great Success!

Last Saturday my group launched our payload into near-space.  Everything on our end went according to plan, but the guys at ANSR (Arizona Near Space Research), forgot to bring the parachute for our balloon, so launch was delayed by about 4 hours.  Good thing there was a bowling alley in the middle of the desert at some casino!!!  All of our sensors worked perfectly and now its time to analyze everyone of our 11,106 data points.  This analysis will be presented the weekend of Apr. 12th at UofA.  Our payload took a ton of supercool pictures...let the slideshow begin!!!

Time to launch!!!

The last two weeks have been incredibly hectic in regard to our project.  We launch this coming Saturday and we have all been double checking our payload to make sure it is launch ready.  We were having a problem with one of our voltage regulators.  It was reaching very dangerous temperatures.  after replacing a regulator and a resistor, we were still having the same problem.  Low and behold we were drawing too much power from the battery at once.  We disconnected the camera from our main power source and wired it to its own battery.  The problem instantly went away, like we anticipated.

The way sensors work is by recording a voltage in relation to what it is sensing.  A big part of the job is actually being able to convert the recorded data into usable data.  This past Monday, I tested the data of that was recorded from the majority of our sensors to make sure the data recorded was actually good.  The calculations were good, and our sensors are recording actual data.  This is going to be extremely helpful for the conference we are speaking at in a few weeks.

All of this hard work and this is what it translates to!!!  HAHA