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.

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