The oomoo 25 hadnt set when we checked in the morning. Essentially all the oomoo 25 were a trash now. Later I found online that some people were saying the shelf life of oomoo 25 is just 4 months. We have more of oomoo 25 than any other resin.

Today I'll report the things that needs changing in fablab and some suggestions that hopefully will be reflected in the fablab inventory.
The most atrocious purchase is the dimension 3D printer. We have an ultimaker and I don't know  why the dimension was ordered. It would sit well in a professional product design or industrial facility and not in an open and widely accessible fablab facility. We tried to make an adjustable wrench, the one that have screw mechanism. The PLA should have been dissolved and we were expecting a working piece of ABS adjustable wrench. But the PLA in nooks of the screw just won't budge. We had put it into the PLA dissolving bath multiple number  of times and 10s of hours and It was just not budging. So having a dimension isn't that great an improvement and it is very expensive and closed source.

We got a quincy 200 compressor(pictures coming soon) supposedly for the sandblaster which is just huge and Luciano was saying that it is not supposed to be in the standard inventory at all and he had never seen it in any fablab. Most likely it was a mistake. This compressor must be an industrial grade machine and used for some special purpose only. I have the idea from the size of it that it might generate enough pressure to tear skin. This thing is humongous and it has huge cylinders. We are not getting proper pipe fittings for the components as well. I'll check out the technical details and post details about it and possible workaround to use this machine.

Epoxy resin is missing. Will have find an Indian vendor for this. Epoxy resin is essential for composites which we totally skipped in prefab due to unavailability of it.

Laser is just 1 feet by 2 feet and CO2. I wish we had a bigger laser. This tiny laser seems like something you'd want to buy for hobby purpose or if your products for lasering doesn't go beyond the size. What fablab requires is at 2 ft by 2 ft Fiber laser which can pretty much do any job thrown at it.

Ideally we should be looking to sell of the compressor and dimension 3d printer and the laser and buy a decent compressor and laser. That would be my dream.

I will try to go through some projects in fab archive and try to use vinyl cutter to make PCB circuit. I want to know the process and excited of the possibilities. I'd have to do the same with composites. I will try to keep in touch with frank and Luciano to get inputs.
And so prefab comes to an end here. Frank told that he will be grading us and he will update on grading criteria. Excited to get a feedback like that and looking forward for it.

Preparing Laptops and Lab Computers

Since fabacademy philosophy roots in opensourcing it only makes sense that Ubuntu and the free softwares are used. This allows free and ope access to anything and everything that is done in fablab. It allows repetability and a common framework that anyone can work with. One of most important of them is the OS itself which is the linux based UBUNTU system. The next most inportant software is  the fab modules which can control alomst any CNC machine that is present in fablab.

The pain of Ubuntu 

Ubuntu means 

"A quality that included the essential human virtue; compassion and humanity. there is a need for understanding not vengance, ubuntu is not victimization"

Indeed you need to have a all these to go through Ubuntu install and setup.

Creating digital accounts

During fabcademy you will be evaluated through your documentation which explains the world and the remote mentor or Neil what you have done. There will be times when your projects will be recommended by your remote mentor to higher faculty or Neil. They will see your website or the files you created. For these reason you need to learn to effectively express your work in a document. They should be online and freely available to anyone, they are opensource.

Day 4 week 1

Lab maintenance and Material handling

I took charge of Vinyl cutter and Roland Modela

I learned how to better handle the vinyl rolls. The vinyl rolls when kept vertically deform and get damaged at the edge which happens due to it not being able to support its own load properly. The correct way to keep a vinyl material is horizontal and the rolls to be taped at the open edge after use so that they don’t become loose.

The vinyl rolls were kept on the ground earlier.

Vinyl cutting

Used to make sticker and best use is to make PCB that are flexible. Can cut copper, epoxy and vinyl sheets.

Loading the material 

Use this lever to release or secure the vinyl.

Materials should be between the two translucent patches as shown in the picture. These have rough surface in order to grip the papaer better. The wheels should secure the paper when the lever is engaged.

Day 2 w2

Laser in our fablab is a trotec speedy 100 with that we have an atmos exhaust filter from trotec. Here's the laser machine and our super cool prefab guide and fabguru Francisco explaining about the filter system.

Polycarbonate lid and Atmos Exhaust Filter system

Filter parameters

Things to watch out for

Exhaust filter should be on.

Molding Casting and Roland Modela

The basic idea for this session is to create an 3D object through computer and try to make it in machinable wax in such a way that a molding pattern is created directly from it. Roland modela will machine the wax. We will try to replicate this object by creating a silicone mold and later use the silicone mold to cast hard plastic into it.

Day 5

Shopbot

Notes:

Designing for milling

Due to tool radius inner corner of a hole or a pocket cant be sharp. Overmilling is advised in such cases.

Good design guidelines for milling.

http://blog.inventables.com/2014/06/learn-about-milling-inside-corner.html

http://www.efunda.com/processes/machining/mill_design.cfm

Better to use antimony to design material to be milled.

Dia max to be used for milling in shopbot- 6mm

Dia max to be used for milling in roland -3mm.

Week 3 Day 1

This week we move to electronics design and fabrication.

Today we started with electronics production. The goal was to fabricate a pcb from an already existing design. We use roland modela to fabricate the PCB.

Assignment: to fabricate a version of fabISP using Roland modela and fab modules.

Process

We downloaded the the following designs.

Week 3 Day2

Many of the fabacademy cad items are design that have .cad extension. These were designed in kokopelli. .cad file is basically a python script. Today we try to edit and understand how the script ad kokopelli.

Assignment

We add components to a hello.ftdi.44.cad and wires on a board and fabricate it.

Consider the following methods of programing a microcontroller

Arduino ide- most user-friendly, many tools, quick,  easy

C  - intermediate difficult, need to have more hardware knowledge, more efficient in code handling and storing, more freedom to program.

Assembly lowest level of programing, need to have through understanding of the hardware also, more difficult, highly efficient in code handling and occupies least storage, and allows most freedom to program.
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