Blog

Week 1: We began the ground work developing our team and its image. We came up with a name and designed a logo. We designed a clean contemporary look to help develop our brand. The simple primary design will be easy to resize and use as a part of the full text logo

Week 2: After we developed our brand we began to move forward on the tools in D tech. We took safety quizzes and got certified for every tool in the lab. We then started to screen print our first team shirts.

Week 3: In the past i have made three dimensional bowls by cutting and then stacking laser cut wood and HDPE. In the past I haven't spent much time on the D-Tech laser, and it is challenging to get the design right. making it harder is the programs available for use. Next week I will upload a file from home matching the specifications for the laser and try again.

Week 4: We spent a lot of time this week expirementing with new ideas and how to make money. We got a few jobs including trophyies for a history project and doorstops for a variety of teachers and programs. While these are small things We will work to come up with a significant product base instead of doing random projects.

Week 5: This week we continued work on a XC trophy, on the Adams Trophies and on the door stops. We saw that you cant always rely on people in business as one of our customers decided not to buy the trophy after we had made it. Moving on the other small projects are going well and we are working to make money.

Week 6: The new car park/ cover was delivered and atto decided to build it. We put the car park together well in less than a class period and began to troubleshot its issues. The car park wasn't made with high quality materials and may not last long.

Week 7: This week we built the garage canopy for the outside are of D tech and also began a few new projects. We have been selling more door stops and making a bit of money. We are looking for more jobs and working on using the screen printers, as well as experimenting with the cnc mills.

Week 8: This week we secured a deal with Fillmore ASB to make their schools shirts. This is the first bigger project that we have taken and we are getting everything ready. I also started to play with epoxy inlays this week. While epoxy inlays in HDPE is nothing new to me I hope to make cool products to sell.

Week 9: This week we started production of the Fillmore ASB shirts using screen emulsion, instead of a vinyl cut. I also began to mess with the epoxy we had in the d tech lab and discovered that it was difficult to work with, and that is set quickly keeping bubbles in.

Week 10: We have continued to work on the Fillmore ASB shirts, a fairly large job and have been very successful with screen printing. We ordered five extra shirts to account for mistakes and so far have messed up on only two primarily because of pressure application when pressing the ink and the drying process. We are trying to complete this job by the beginning of next week. I have also continued to work with the cnc mill and work with new carving techniques.

Week 11: We have started a variety of other jobs in addition to the Fillmore ASB shirt project. These projects include redesigning our best selling doorstops. Because of the nature of the soldier project and the low cost per piece for trophies Atto has opted out of the house joust and will pursue projects with higher profit margins. The Fillmore ASB shirts are done, however each shirt has a small tilt on the logo because f an error with the screen emulsion. Luckily the error is small and wont cause issues with the buyer.

Week 12: I have been further experimenting with the CNC mills and trying to get the hang of 3D carves on the X-Carve. its a challenging process as there is no easy to use software to make designs so you have to find loopholes or use difficult CAM programs based in fusion 360. This week we also have started to look for more jobs and look for ways to make significant amounts of money. I hope to use 3D carves to design clocks, art and landscapes that use epoxy to add a 3D environment that is colored and looks good. Finishing the Fillmore ASB shirts completely we had the perfect amount with no extras. As we move towards the end of the semester we hope to get some larger very profitable jobs.

Second Semester Blogs

Week 1: 1/6 - 1/10: Started on a plaque for the bio science Olympics. We had been waiting on router bits which we planned to try and use with the cnc mill, but it quickly becme clear using a traditional router would be a lot easier. I dissassembled an * carve and used the dewalt spindle to route the dedges which cme out nicely, I then sanded adn stained the wood. I opted for one coat of an oil baded stain but people wanted it to be darker, So agreed to try and put on another coat the next week when it had fully absorbed.

Week 2: 1/13 - 1/17: Continued work on the plaque, unfortunately as a applied the second layer of stain (against directions) to try and darken the wood it didn't absorb well and formed bubbles on the surface. This promoted us to completely sand and retain the whole thing. Also had some issues with the laser and acrylic and while I wasn't tasked with it caused some light stress for other members of the team. I also worked to repair the 500mm by 500mm x carve after someone had disconnected two primary bolts on the z-axis.

Week 3: 1/20 - 1/24: We got busy messing with random stuff relating to the x carve machine. I began to experiment heavily with the newly added contouring feature on the x carve CAD software easel. I also glued together multiple pieces of colored MDF to create a multi layered colored wood to mess around with on the x carve. I also started to design multi cut three dimensional objects on a two dimensional CAD software

Week 4: 1/27 - 1/31: We have been producing stamps for teachers for some time now with wooden handles and lasered rubber stamps bt in an effort to make cooler handles kaden and I have been working with the spindle sander and the x carve to make kinda cool handles what look better and that feel better to hild. I used the x carve features to do a four stage cut to make a hndle out of the multi colored MDF which came out super cool but a little bit off. Also getting interisted in using fion 360 to am 3D maps to carve on the x carve mills. This is a difficlt process because to get a high effinision model and program it you apparently needa god damn super computer

Week 5: 2/3 - 2/7: Using a lighter acrylic Andrew go the bio science plaque pretty good looking and we mounted it to the backing. kept messing with the cnc mill and attempted to cut out a bowl which ended up just cutting a chunk of MDF in half. Started to mess around and help other teams with epoxy resin and dying it. USed left over to coat the stamp I had cut out in the CNC whih ended up being a super cool concept I hope to replicte with more sucess

Week 6: 2/10 - 1/14: Well now its COVID time seems as if there is a good chance of school getting shut down but no word yet. We started to mount make plates on the plaque which didn't go well because we did it by hand and didn't use the CNC. Also continued teaching teams how to use epoxy resin for inlays something I have done a lot of in the past. This week wasn't super productive for me but continued to try and carve maps on the x carve but avidh seems to be having more success with lower quality file on the other desktop mill. The problem is that to create a bit map the computer can handle landscapes become low quality and almost unrecognizable

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