Happy New Year!

Welcome back.  I hope that you had a great break and are looking forward to a fantastic spring semester in IED.  The year is going by very fast, so getting in everything that we need to get done and all of the fun extra things will be a challenge.  Right from the start, we have a busy month with activities outside the class on top of continuing to learn about the engineering design process.

Toy Train designed using Autodesk Inventor

In the class, we will pick back up with Inventor lessons to enhance and improve our 3d modeling skills.  First off, we will pick back up with the Advanced Sketching activity that was started in December before we started the review for the final exam.  This activity, if you remember, had us exploring different methods of creating a 2d sketch in Inventor.  On Wednesday and Friday, we will move on to a similar activity and explore other methods for turning the 2d sketch in to a 3d solid model.  That is to help set up the train activity, which we will start next week. You will actually create a miniature toy train like the one shown on the right.  If you want, you can create your train on the 3d printer.


Extra-Curricular Projects

This train will play a part in the participation in the upcoming IMAPS Digital Printed Circuit Structures workshop on Feb 21-22.  I will explain in class and provide a link with more details, but a team of 4-6 students from RRHS will have a chance to present at this professional workshop, attended and created by professional engineers and engineering faculty members from some of the same colleges to which you may be soon applying.  The conference is being held in El Paso, but the team with the best design will have an opportunity to present your project via Skype to an audience of professionals!  It should be a lot of fun and a great addition to your college applications not to mention the direct exposure that it will give you before faculty members.

Students can participate in the Stratasys Extreme Redesign 3d Printing Challenge.  The challenge is fairly open, but you will select an item that you are familiar with and improve it through redesign.  We will cover this in a later unit, but contest entries are due February 6.  The linked web site includes contest rules and the application instructions.  You will need to submit an STL file for the 3d printer, and I can help you create that.  Winning entries in each category (and there are three) will be awarded $2500!

Don't forget about the chance to apply for the SEMI High Tech U, which will be Feb 20, 21, & 22.  It is a very fun and very educational 3 day field trip.  Of course,  you would be responsible for the school work for those days that you miss.  However, RRHS students have a chance to apply before applications are opened to students at other schools.  That was supposed to happen January 1, but I imagine that you can still get in early before too many others apply.  Dowlonad and submit your application RIGHT AWAY!