The End

There comes a time in every project's life when things come to an end, when friends part ways, and when people bid others goodbye.

It might not be all that, but our project is done, the Sunflower built, the Portfolio written, and all other miscellaneous criterion accounted for. In fact, I'm going to print out this blog in a minute for our journal, so this is the last post for the Sunflower. Ever. 

Sad, isn't it? I'm getting all misty-eyed myself. Well, we had a good run, one wild adventure, filled with engineering and writing and brainstorming and actual storming and cuts and bumps and bruises galore. But all good things must come to an end.

Thanks for following us on our adventure through the Engineering Process. As a reward for sticking through it with us, we're going to give each and every one of you a FREE SUNFLOWER! Yup, that's right. F.R.E.E. Hard to believe, isn't it. 

That's probably because I'm lying.

And on that bombshell, it's time to end.

Tommorow becomes today

Tomorrow:

A mystical land were 99.99% of all productivity is stored.



Needless to say, tomorrow has become today for us here at Sunflower Sustainable Systems; it's coming down to the wire now and we're taking notice.  We are still projected to complete the project on time for the symposium though which is a very good thing; how much sleep we get in the process though is a completely different story.

Sleep? What's that?

None of that around here.

With time dwindling away, we've had to resort to drastic measures. 

In order to have any chance of attaching all the mirrors tomorrow, we've decided to get them all as ready as humanly possible, so all we have to do is attach them. We ran by Home Depot on the way back to Casey's house and picked up a 100' Roll of perforated metal straps; with any luck, we can cut it into hundreds of little strips and use it to attach the mirrors, still giving them adjustability. 

Cutting and bending the brackets is the easy part; measuring where to attach them and then doing it is not. Even so, we made great time: over 150 in an hour and a half. Not too shabby for your friendly neighborhood engineers.

Armed and Dangerous

The Sunflower finally got its appendages attached. After breaking two of the pegs to bits, the rest seemed far more cooperative. We sure showed them.

Anyways, the arms are on; next comes the mirrors. But of course, that requires us to figure out how we're going to attach them. Never a dull day.

Murphy's Law

We've come to expect that the Sunflower will give us problems whenever it gets the chance; at least it doesn't disappoint.

While trying to assemble the Sunflower after school today, we inadvertently broke one peg (and got another one stuck), meaning I now had to reawaken the dormant monstrosity that is the mill to make two more. I would say that we're lucky it was only the peg that broke, but that would probably only cause other things to break to spite: so I won't.

It's Like LEGOS!

Only bigger, cheaper,  and with more splinters.

After what seemed like an eternity, all of the parts for the Sunflower are finally milled out. We even managed to get the base assembled today. Unfortunately, our victory is short lived, considering Symposium is only a few days away.

Because of that, Casey and Pierce have taken it upon themselves to put the arms together tonight and bring them to school tomorrow ready to assemble. We might actually get this done.

Wouldn't that be something.

Manipulator of the Manipulator of Light

After getting the proper tools for the job, nice sunny weather, and about 140 mirrors later, the mirrors are done.  All that's left to do now (hopefully) is to assemble the sunflower itself and complete the proposal.

Rain Delay

My original goal for today was to get all the mirrors cut and complete my mission of research.  However, nature had another idea in mind as to what I was going to do ...
One thunderstorm later and I have no internet, it's too dark to see to cut the mirrors, and I realize I don't have the right tool for the job ... Well, at least there is Sunday.

Working on the Weekend

We came to school this Saturday with the intention of finishing the milling: surprisingly, that's exactly what we did.

With the exception of a few pegs (which, taking only 5 minutes each, aren't the biggest priority at the moment), all of the Sunflower's parts are milled out and ready to be assembled.

Yay us!

Special Delivery!

The mirrors Casey ordered came in today (finally!).  With the rest of the team still scrambling to finish milling out the rest of the sunflower, the task of mirror manipulation falls onto me.  My goal is to get all the pieces cut tomorrow and be done with it.

Presentation Planning

With milling (finally) on schedule, it just might be time to give some thought to how we plan to present the project at the symposium.

Problemo Dos

I need a vacation...

All the stress of a major engineering project is finally getting to me. This is the second time this week that something's gone wrong. And as the resident MasterCAM monkey, it's my fault.

The metal pipe in the closet – you know, the one that we're using for our axles – is 30 mm across. The holes in the arms and pegs where the axle is supposed to go is 40 mm across. See the problem? Apparently my brain didn't until after two pegs and three arms had already been milled. And since there isn't a single company in the United States that makes 40 mm hollow metal pipe – and Britain was being finicky over shipping it to us – we're now back to square one.

Now, I'm going to go fix my screw up, redo the parts, and take a very long nap. Not necessarily in that order.

Mission Report

The internet ninja has returned with some valuable information.  Now to compile, sort through the mess, and write that proposal.

Problemo

I need to stop being clever; it doesn't suit me.

In my infinite wisdom, I figured that the wood we would be buying for our pegs would be a little bit off in thickness, so I decided to offset the slots in the base – the ones the pegs go in – by 1/32". Not a bad idea, except I offset them in the wrong direction. 

Apparently, it's standard practice for wood to be the tiniest bit larger than it says it's supposed to be; i.e. a 3/4" peg will actually fit snugly into a 3/4" hole – who knew? So the slots I made smaller so the pegs would fit right now make them not fit at all, which is unfortunate.

We're still going to use them: we'll just have to sand down the pegs a bit so they'll fit in the smaller slots. I went ahead and fixed that for the rest of the bases, so that's good. 

I Stand Corrected

It would seem that I spoke too soon.

It wasn't the file type that was making the mill be stupid. I've got no idea what it was, but it wasn't that. Somewhere in the ten feet the Flash Drive had to travel between computers, it was being a very bad influence on the NDC file. Speculation aside, keeping the USB drive out of the equation seems to solve the problem; we've set up a DropBox account to transfer the files directly, keeping the troublesome middleman out of the picture.

And now everything seems to be working. But then, I've said that before.

First Mill

We're still alive, which is good. And we're vaguely on schedule, which is better.

We began milling today; two of the arm pivot points got milled out of random 3/4" MDF we found lying around the shop – which is all well and good, since I could only ever manage to get 14 of the buggers to fit on the 4' x 22" sheets we needed to buy. That saves us some money and proves that I'm not completely incompetent.

The FMS, however, is another matter.

For some reason, any file I import from SolidWorks comes out perpetually sideways; that is, even if I reorient the geometry in MasterCAM, the machine still decides it's a good idea to try milling the part in one dimension.

Saving the SolidWorks Part as an IGES file before importing it seems to fix that (though, to be fair, it has it's own annoying tick: a habit of making two copies of the wireframe – which, when you're trying to chain geometry, is very, very annoying).

All problems aside, we've faced the gauntlet and lived. We've got a system going, and two parts to show for it. Now it's time to buckle down and knock out the rest of the milling.

April Fools

In preparation for tomorrow's milling, Pierce and I ran to Home Depot after school today. Two 2' x 4' x .5" sheets of MDF are hardly enough, but it's a start.

Casey also managed to find cheaper acrylic mirrors than the ones we've ordered, so he spent his day trying to cancel it. If all goes well, we should have the mirrors sometime next week and we should begin milling out the Sunflower tomorrow.

Fingers crossed!

Renderings: The Sequel

I've added one final touch to the model before we start milling. We had an idea to allow the Sunflower to tilt and follow the sun: the flower itself is attached to a wooden base, which then rests on a large arc. The arc acts as both a support and a pivot, with holes like those in the arm pivots for adjustability.

Ideally, it should allow the flower to follow the sun through most of its journey through the sky. I'm not entirely sure the arc can support the weight of the whole flower, but we'll see. It's not the most critical of components at the moment – what good is something to mount a Sunflower when one doesn't have a Sunflower; needless to say, we're going to focus on making the Sunflower first.

The Proposal

For simplicity sake, as I do research I will also write parts of the proposal, nothing special at the moment, just very rough drafts to get the main points/ideas/concepts down.  Team Secretary is reporting for duty.

Mission Update

Periodically I shall report back in with progress regarding my mission of accumulating research, and this is one such report.  Remember I mentioned how knowledge is power?  Well, if knowledge is power, then at the current moment I can't even lift a single sunflower ...
However, I shall not be detoured, I shall not fail this mission.

Mighty Movin'

In the interest if preserving his sanity – and his hearing – Mr. Martin proposed moving the FMS (the gigantic, half-ton milling machine) into the machine shop at the back of class. It's easy, except not at all.

Two hours and fifteen people later we finally got the FMS cozied up in its new home. Unfortunately, all that physical labor siphoned away our time, and we were left with none to mill with.

Milling begins tomorrow.

Hopefully.

Rendered Speechless

After slaving for days over a dusty keyboard, our final SolidWorks model is done. Unlike the last one – which was as much of a brainstorming as a model – this model contains the actual parts we're going to be milling out on the FMS.

Sunflower™ – Final Render

Apart from the mirrors, the whole thing (mostly) is made of 1/2" MDF (Medium-Density Fibreboard), an extraordinarily cheap and environmentally kosher wood. To add strength and thickness to the parts, each component is actually several MDF sheets layered together and connected by hammering wooden dowels through them. The arms will be milled in their full length and stuck together to add thickness. The base, on the other hand, is staggered: each layer is made up of four identical pieces, but consecutive layers are offset 45° from one another (ensuring that the seam of one layer corresponds with the solid part of the next).

Eight layers of 1/2" MDF compose the base, while three layers make up the arms; all these pieces have holes cut in them in order to reduce the weight, with the exception of the middle layer in the arms (which is solid to give us somewhere to screw the mirrors into). The pivot points the arms rest in are 3/4" MDF, while the axel that holds them there is 4cm hollow steel pipe we found lying around in the Tech Lab (yay recycling!).

Next week, I begin turning these Solidworks parts into the MasterCAM toolpaths that will be milled. Allonsy!

Forces Assembled!

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and I am done with SolidWorks!

The final assembly is done, and it looks nice, which is surprising, because none of us actually thought until now that it would look like anything in particular at all. I'll be posting renderings of it soon, and drawings a little later than that –because pretty pictures take precedence over technical drawings, right?

From this point, all the actual designing of the Sunflower is done; all I have to do is import the files into MasterCAM and toolpath them, then it'll be on to the mill for a little good old-fashioned carnage.

Sunny is born

Inspire award

This was a previous project that showed us the simple concept of mirrors using the sun to produce large amounts of heat it is a little beat up, but it is a great teaching tool.

The flower is blooming

Open Petals

Closed Petals

Knowledge is Power

Having a general idea of what we want to do is nice and all, but if we don't have any information to back it up it might all be for naught.  As the internet ninja, it is my duty to collect extraneous information that may prove useful in our project, so today, I begin my mission.

Arc flower

The model is incomplete, but is shaping up quite nicely.

Welcome The Sunflower

Welcome to our blog, which will also serve as our journal for our project.  Within this journal we shall chronicle the development and creation of our novel idea – The Sunflower.

So what is The Sunflower?
In essence, a very cool mirror.  The goal is to developed a system for efficiently focusing the sun's energy, allowing for it to be harnessed and used for various tasks.  The idea is for the system be independent.

Is the system independent?
Independence deals with two elements primarily – efficiency and adaptability.  The Sunflower concentrates a large amount of energy into one location, allowing for easy harvesting of energy.  The Sunflower will also have modules designed for specific tasks, such as water distillation, cooking, and electricity generation.  Essentially, the system will allow for independence.

The Sunflower is currently a theoretical idea, but within the next couple of weeks we aim to turn this novel idea into a practical one with real world applications. We welcome and encourage you to join us on our journey toward this goal.