Time is ticking down! We are now just one week away from “Soft Opening” which is our penultimate milestone before the end of the semester. At that point our project should be considered as close to done as possible, and the faculty will provide feedback for minor tweaks before our final presentation.

It was an exciting week because until now most of our shipments have been for internal components or small but integral parts that drive the installation. This week we received our wood sheets, jars, and 8020 aluminum framing, all of which contribute significantly to our project feeling closer to the finish line. The projects are in a much more visible state now and the end is totally within reach!

Jason spent the majority of his time this week finalizing the software for both Jars and Mirrors. He tested the servos with the Kinect and everything is running smoothly at this point. The next step will be to attach the servos to the mirrored panels and fine-tune the angles from the different viewing points.
Elwin focused on the jar mounts and cores, working closely with Sahana from team Lazer Mouse to laser cut different prototypes out for us to test with the PCB. He worked on several iterations, ensuring everything can be properly wired inside the jar.
Anisha worked in the shop, cutting and preparing the wood exterior for the 8020 aluminum framing and for the false wall for the Jars. She assembled the 8020 framing,marked all the attachment points, disassembled it, and then drill pressed the holes for the exterior.
Yotam coordinated with the staff to make sure everything was greenlit for preparing the lobby and the 2nd floor hallway for our installations. He also purchased the jars, drilled holes with the drill press, and cleaned the oil residue off of half of them.

Current Challenges
We’re at the point where small failure points are starting to expose themselves. The pressure of our weight load is starting to show and we’ve been trying to check in multiple times a day with each other to make sure things are moving as planned. In particular, our Jars installation has been a complex undertaking because it has so many small components ranging from the PCB to the soldering of the components to the core design to the mount to the false wall to the power distribution.

The biggest lesson that we’ve learned from this short fabrication period is the importance design reviews. Since designs have to be solid before it goes into fabrication, any small change puts pressure on the already time-crunched fabrication. As a team, we were not consistent with putting our work in front of the other team mates for review so as a result small problems are being solved as they pop up.

Looking Forward
Our team will be wholly focused on putting together our installations for Softs next Monday. The various components of Jars will be assembled and the false wall will be hung by FMS on Thursday. Anisha is out for a conference for half of the week so the 8020 framing for Mirrors will come up at the end of the week. We can’t wait to show everyone our installations!

NEWSLETTER #12 – PDF FORMAT