4/27/2016 0 Comments FabSLAM ChallengeFabSLAM is a multi-week, team-based, digital fabrication competition. Digital Harbor site : http://www.digitalharbor.org/fabslam/ The challenge this year is city issues. Essential Question: What can be designed and 3D printed to help our city? FabSLAM ElemEngineer Team
Student Documentation and NotesMarch 17 Our teachers, Mrs. Wolfe and Mrs. Randall went to a Digital Harbor training and brought back a 3D Printer (named Betty) to our classroom. They asked who would be interested in going to a FabSLAM Competition. We had 5 sixth graders and from Mrs. Wolfe's class and a 4th grader in Mrs. Randall's class. We are excited to get started. Our homework over Spring Break: Each of us to come up with 15 ideas that can be 3D Printed to help the city of Boise. March 30, 3:45- 5:00 Our first meeting: Deciding on a team name and mascot Dividing up jobs Sharing our 15 ideas and narrowing it down to one. Possible ideas included: Trash Homelessness Polluted river water Geothermal issues and housing Insects and trees Cheat grass Fire Danger We decided to discuss ideas with our families and wait until next day to narrow it to one issue with a vote. We then read the criteria for the challenge and Experimented on doing a 3D test print with Wilma (LulzBot) and Betty (PrintRBot) and seeing how the machines works. We have had a limited amount of experience using a LulzBot Mini. April 1 12:30-1:00 - Voted to decide on problem to solve. Since Boise is known as the "City of Trees", we decided on the insect issue. There was an article in the Idaho Statesman that talked about this new fruit fly that came to Boise in 2012. It is damaging the fruit trees. If we can solve this problem, perhaps we could solve other insect problems such as the elm beetle or Longhorn Beetle problems. 3:45 - 5:00 Meeting with Mr Wolfe who is an engineer and software developer. Creation of Khan Ban Board - To Do, Doing, Done Divided up tasks to be completed by next meeting April 5 12:30 - 1:00 Mrs. Wolfe allows us to meet at lunch to work on tasks. Recently, the Spotted Wing Drosophila is ruining our soft skinned fruits (peaches, plums, raspberries...)by laying eggs on the fruit and the insects are eating their way out, while spoiling the fruit. The Spotted Wing Drosophila is easily attracted to orange, green and yellow. For more info on the Spotted Wing Drosophila go to http://www.fruit.cornell.edu/spottedwing/ April 12 12:30-1:00 We have our first print! Jeff came up with a sphere that could be nailed to a tree . It looked great and worked the first time!! However Mrs. Wolfe pointed out the nail could hurt the tree. Research did prove that. April 14 12:30-1:00 We next printed another Jeff design that had a ring over the sphere. It worked but the ring was thin. It broke when Mrs. Wolfe picked it up. Back to the drawing board! We next printed two designs one being a small bug death star (Sydney) and the other a candy apple thing with a hexagon honey comb inside. Recently, our Lulzbot was having issues because it wasn't clean and other technical difficulties. Scent of Genius! Mrs. W. had told us about wood filament and brass filament and even scented. So, I was observing our Lulzbot Mini and thinking about chocolate. What kind of person thinks about that combination?! Well, that turned into, "scented filament"! What if you had a bookmark that smells like cherries! Well, after I had exploded my idea in front of my friend, Lena, she started think and shouted, "Vinegar scented filament!" That could be part of the solution to the Spotted Wing Drosophilia problem in Boise! I shared this idea with Mrs. W and she thought it was genius! April 15 3:45-5:00 We now have 3 designs to look at and list pros and cons of the design. We really like the small holes in the trap. This way it wont catch bigger helping insects like bees. Lizzy and Lena created a Pro's and Con's list for a Design Iteration Board. The Team thought we should keep track of our learning process. Please refer to Design Iteration Board. Sydney is working on our new website. This one! April 18 12:30-1:00 Today we are having a meeting and we are talking about a design. We all have designs and different opinions. We are trying to all get on the page, as in all know what is going on in the group. Lena is creating T-Shirts with transfer paper. We are struggling to help our filament smell like vinegar. Sydney thought since you can get scented filament, you could scent the filament with vinegar. Maybe we could propose it to a filament company!! Joe soaked some filament in 5% vinegar overnight and there is no scent at all. So, Mrs. Wolfe is going to assign Joe to soaking the filament in strong vinegar for a week! We also want to see if it disintegrates the filament. Will our product hold up with a vinegar solution? April 19 Joe and Lizzy started a insect solution bait test, Joe researched what attracts and kills Spotted Wing Drosophlia. They are trying a vinegar, dish soap and gelatin solution. There are no results yet. But there was some confusion with the documentation and the test is going to be redone. They are also soaking filament, both extruded and not, in vinegar to see if it breaks down. We discovered that our Hips 3mm filament is environmental friendly and will break down. We want a good product so we want it to last at least one season. Vinegar is acid so we are testing to see if this solution will hurt our design, Lena is working on the T shirts design and they will be done is two weeks. We are starting to narrow down our iterations. This weekend we are all going to make our own designs taking the best of each design. April 20 We had a lunch meeting. Vinegar test is proving that vinegar does not harm the filament! We are looking at a hook design to hang from trees. April 22 FEEDBACK FROM EARTH DAY PRESENTER We had an Earth Day Assembly and met with Tim Womack who teaches kids about trees and conservation. We talked with him about insects affecting Boise and the Spotted Drosophila. We showed him our design and he was pretty impressed. He said we had all the good components of a trap. He thought the 3D printing idea was awesome! April 26 Today, our team secretary, Lena, called Lulzbot and we figured out how to stop the constant spaghetti! It is working smoothly at this point from what I have seen The tests are happening right this minute! The team is continuing the experimenting with gelatin and liquid. So far, the filament is not disintegrating. We are really getting down to the wire on our designs! I hope we can catch up after the spaghetti! See below for some emails .....Hello, My name is Susan Wolfe. I am a teacher at Hawthorne Elementary and my students are using the Lulzbot mini to create 3D Print designs. We spoke yesterday about some failed prints. You actually spoke with one of my students, Sam. We cleaned the head, looked at our settings and did another test print. We are still having issues. Our Rocktopus print has a crimped tentacle. Our next print, was spaghetti again. I am sending photos. Please contact me by email or cell phone #(208)371-3881 Thank you, Susan Wolfe Helpdesk <[email protected]>Apr 27 Hello ElemEngineers, Here is the list of items to check that cause issues as you are having. We need to reduce variables first, then we can find out what the cause is. With the hexagon hotend the first thing we will want to do is to check your micro blower. This is the smaller of the two fans on the hotend, and it will be pointed directly at the heat sink. (The horizontal hexagon metal plates). This is on a dedicated 5v connection, and should turn on full blast whenever the printer is turned on. Please turn off the printer, and turn it back on while keeping an eye on that fan. If this is not functioning, it can lead to heat creep issues and making printing much more difficult. If the micro blower checks out, let's look for an obstruction in the hotend. Bring your hotend up off the build plate and up to printing temperature. Once at temp, open your idler and manually push the filament through the hotend. Your filament should extrude in a solid consistent line. If nothing is able to extrude or it comes out like a "pig tail" it will indicate an obstruction and it will need to be cleared. We recommend a procedure called cold pulls, and you can find a write up on it below. https://www.lulzbot.com/support/unclogging-tips We will next want to test the extruder. Be sure that all sides of the hobbed bolt are clear. Turn off the printer or disable the motors, and manually turn the large herringbone gear to access all sides of the bolt. Using the dental pick included in your toolkit you will be able to ensure each "cog" of the bolt is clear. Once cleaned, load in filament and verify idler tension. It should be ~5mm from inside washer to inside washer (Distance the spring is compressed). Next attempt to extrude via LCD/Cura/ while the printhead is in mid air. If this is successful we know that the extruder itself is fine. If the hot end extrudes material in a straight line, then the tool head is doing well, then we will want to try another print. Please take a photo of the first layers and a completed print photo. This will help us troubleshoot the issue. Thank you David Hall Aleph Objects, Inc. +1-970-377-1111 ext.610 [email protected] http://Forum.LulzBot.com http://LulzBot.com Hello Team ElemEngineers, Thank you for the photo. The problem here appears to be that you need to go to "expert" and select "switch to quickprint" then choose your filament and choose your detail. This will load the profile for the bed leveling and homing into Cura. This appears to be missing. This will cause the printer to not home properly and to not do the bed leveling. If it does this on a print after using the quickprint mode only, then we will have to enter some commands into the Gcode bar to see if the end stops have been damaged. Please try this and then let me know if it will print. Thank you David Hall Aleph Objects, Inc. +1-970-377-1111 ext.610 [email protected] http://Forum.LulzBot.com http://LulzBot.com April 27 Troubleshooting still. Still getting spaghetti. Called LulzBot Support and went through a series of process of elimination. (See emails)Rocktopus almost worked. Will look at another step. We have looked at the fan, the hot extruder end and other parts. April 28 Fixed and made a test print. The problem was a plugged up cog wheel and settings were incorrect. All systems go. Made next iteration #6 Design has a S hook to hang in a tree instead of a ring. Problems with the ring were it would not fit over large branches. April 29 3:45-5:00 Iteration #6 Made today! While Mrs. Wolfe helped reorganize and check dates on this site, the rest of the Team with Mr. Wolfe and Mrs. Randall looked at the next steps and our last 3 designs. We are having lid problems. Iteration #7 broke. Mr. Wolfe discussed the different lid types such as hinge, twist and snap. We decided on a twist with an L shaped snap. May 3 We caught our very first bug! We actually were testing how often the gelatin melts. We found that it melts about once a day and overnight hardens a little again. But, when we left it outside a bug was attracted to the solution. Now we know the gelatin works! We are testing out iterations 4 & 6. One of the iterations is in a tree and the other in a bush. May 6 Today we heavily discussed pheromones, the name of our device, and final designs. Some of top names are 3-Ds : Drosophilla Drops Dead, Drosophila Knock Out, Twist n' Lock, Bug Bubble, and Twist n' Lock Bug Bubble! Our final design contains a loop, twist n' lock, and design #8. The lock looks like an L. We caught a few more insects in the test design when we put it outside. We are still having problems with a working lid. May 9 We have now made iterations # 8. The lid still breaks easily. Jeff is going to work on this at home. We filmed our commercial! That was fun!! May 11 Jeff has a working model! Bad news though. Sam dropped out of our competition. He has too much work at TVMSC. We are all sad and are wondering if we can still compete. Mrs. Wolfe and Mrs. Randall say yes. May 12 Our working model design #9 still has a lid that breaks too easily. We keep trying but at this point we may just have to use it. Lena, and Lizzy are working hard on the board with Mrs. Wolfe's help. May 13 Well we are all scrambling to put finishing touches. Loading commercial and making 3 models. Mr. Wolfe gave us a pep talk. Here we go!
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4/11/2016 0 Comments Our First DesignsBelow are some pictures of our recent "deliverables". Engie, Mrs. Wolfe moving her "stickie" and our first design that unfortunately broke. :(
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