Week two is just wrapping up and it feels great to have settled into our teams and begin working on our main projects. The first half of the week was spent finishing up engineering boot camp and working on our anteater enrichment devices. Working with Karen and Waheed, my team created a device that would allow the anteaters to feed through the fence in their habitat. The feeder was made of clear plastic, that way visitors to the zoo would be able to see the anteater’s long tongues in action. Below is a picture of me demonstrating the correct use of our device.
We concluded boot camp on Wednesday with team presentations where we showcased our designs to the rest of the interns and Dr. Wettergreen. The bootcamp was a great crash course through the material of ENGI 120, and it was great working on the project for the Houston anteaters. Hopefully we will be going back to the zoo soon to test our devices and so we can get to see the really cool water fountains they have there as well.
On Thursday we were assigned to our major project teams after an extensive 3-D printing workshop. I was assigned to work on the forearm rotation measurement device. Our client is Dr. Gogola at Shriner’s Hospital who has tasked us with developing an accurate measurement tool for determining the range of motion of a forearm. Many of the physical therapy patients at the hospital have trouble moving their arms for the traditional method of measuring forearm rotation. Dr. Gogola needs a new device that will work for patients with cerebral palsy and other muscle disorders. A past ENGI 120/200 team made great progress on a working design, it just required to much force for the patients to rotate. I will be working with Saad and Hillary to hopefully improve their design, and if necessary, begin with a new design. We began be building a physical model of the past team’s final prototype. We have their designs and CAD files, but not the actual physical model. We laser cut balsa wood pieces to form one component and began 3-D printing the rest. Below is a photo of the first component we began printing.
The 3D printing workshop was great and gave us all a solid foundation to begin using the printers for the rest of the summer. I had very little experience 3-D printing, so I tried taking a SolidWorks file I had already created, and printing it out. Below is a picture of the final print. The piece is a nozzle for the Rice Eclipse MK1 rocket motor. During the school year I work on lathing these nozzles out of stainless steel and graphite, so it was great to make one on the 3-D printer as well.
