User:Ewoo9740/ENES-100/project 1

My Instructor's course page which points to this.

Project Preference

 * MakerBot PLA Material
 * Corn starch
 * Escher

Problem Statement
The goal of this project is to design and implement a set of tests, in order to experimentally determine the material properties of the PLA material. We will be testing 5-6 different shapes

Project Plan
For the first week my group will do research on how to change the PLA material color and anything else we can find on the MakerBot like dimensions and specifications of what we can print on it. Eventually we plan to tinker with the MakerBot and see if we actually can change the PLA material. Also to come up with diferent shapes to test the 2-point and 3-point test on.

Week 1 Narrative
In the first week of my teams project we first look at the wiki page of the MakerBot PLA Material. We took some pictures of the printer and needed to find out if we could switch the material it used to print. Then over the weekend we thought of shapes to print out and test and what tests to put them through. We will be doing the 3-point and 2-point test. On Tuesday we made CAD drawing of the piece we want to print out and tried to find weights we could use to test the pieces. One of the teammates will ask his physics teacher to borrow the weights. We all then task ourselves to take the certification test to use the 3D printer before next class. We hope to print our first object on Thursday. The shapes we decided to make are as followed:
 * I-beam
 * Rectangular prism
 * Triangular Prism
 * Cylinder
 * At least one weird shape

Week 2 Narrative
Created CAD drawing to print but they have to be obj file so the team has to figure out how to do that. Looked for what was available that could be used for testing the 3-point test in the workhsop area. This week was a slow week but hopefully once printing begin, the project will start rolling. Some next steps are to test if printing has begun and then have a table will all the element that are teasted

Week 3 Narrative
Went in workshop and cut out 4 small pieces of wood 5/8 inches wide for the test rig so the pieces will not roll or slide off when testing each piece.

Week 4 Narrative
Brought in paracord to see how well it would work on the 3-point bending test. Found that it stretched a lot. Weaved the paracord in a way that it won't stretch. Tested a triangular prism and cylinder made out of cardboard at home. Each piece was hollow. There were 3 triangular prisms the size of .5 inches, 1 inch, and 1.5 inches. There were 2 cylinder pieces the size of .5 inches and 1 inch. Found that the 1.5 inch triangular prism bent at about 30 pounds. So changing the 3D pieces to .5 inch was a smart move.