Week of Feb 25

Students should finish the section view activity on Tuesday.  You will need to create item # 5 and #7 in Inventor.  Be sure that you choose the best side for a front view BEFORE you start sketching.  Skip #4 & #6 (sketch in your journal) as you will use drawings that are created by Inventor.  On Thursday, we will start a review of dimensioning techniques so that you can create a drawing packet for the train.  Then, we will be finished up with the train.

If you want to print your train on the 3d printer, you need to engrave your name or initials in the train body somewhere, make sure that it is shelled, and place an STL file in the 3d pinter folder for your class period.  Get with myself or Mr. Peterson for help completing this.  I have printed about 8-10 of the trains already.  Be patient as the trains need to cure and dry before I can get them to you, so that they don't break as easily.

Leave your journals in class this week as I will be grading them.  Be sure to follow the usual journal requirements.  You should have class notes and work from the last two activities: auxiliary views and section views.  You can find the activities on Moodle if you need to make up any work.

Students have the choice sheets to sign up for courses for next year.  I created and gave a presentation in class last week that described the course sequence for engineering classes.  Students in IED should take Principles of Engineering (PoE) next, but you may take it in conjunction with another class if you need to squeeze in two classes in one year.  In order to be recognized as an academy graduate, you must complete IED, PoE, and Digital Electronics (DE). In addition, we offer Civil Engineering and Architecture (CEA) and Aerospace Engineering (AE) as specialization electives.  Both courses appear on the choice sheet for next year.  If you have any questions about the courses, what they involve, or what you should take, get with me.

Week of Feb 18

It is that time of year again - when students begin making choices about classes for next year.  For one thing, if you are planning to take the next engineering elective, know that we will be offering Aerospace Engineering next year.  The RRISD academy model requires that you take IED, PoE and DE, specifically and may take the specialization electives above and beyond that.  Those electives are currently Civil Engineering & Architecture and - now - Aerospace Engineering.  The plan is that we will alternate AE with CEA every other year.  Both of those are showing up on your course selection sheet for 2013-2014.  For now, I would expect that AE will be offered in 2013 and again in 2015.  If you are a sophomore and planning on AE, you should make room in your schedule next year in case it is not offered in 2014.  Freshmen will have plenty of time to take AE in a future year and should definitely take PoE for next year.  If you have any questions about the course sequence, please don't hesitate to ask me.

IED will continue with auxiliary drawings in Wednesday. You should make the parts from the last activity (8.3) in Inventor and check your calculations using the iProperties feature.  Next, you will move on to dimensioning, which has been covered in the past. However, there are some new dimension topics to cover in addition to a much needed review.

This is the start of a new six weeks.  The year is already 2/3 over and going fast!  Look for report cards to come home late this week.  Also, I graded journals for the six weeks.  If you did not leave yours at school, make sure to do so tomorrow so that I can grade it before grades are finally due.

Parents, we have a student teacher for this semester.  Mr. John Peterson has been with us for a month now and already been teaching IED classes.  He will take on more of the planning and grading responsibilities for my classes for the next couple of months.  You can still contact me if you have any questions, but I wanted you to meet Mr. Peterson because he has been doing a great job for RRHS engineering.

Week of Feb 11

You should be finished with all train parts (graded this weekend) and the train assembly, that will be graded this week.  We will begin some additional Inventor and design concepts this week, starting with parametric modelling on Monday.  Once we have the skills, we will create a drawing packet for all of the parts of our trains.

If you want to have your train printed on the 3d printer, I will give you instructions in class on Monday.  It is not required and, since the material is expensive, I only want to print trains for those of you who want them.

This is the last week of the six weeks, so make sure that you are up to date on all of your assignments.  To help with that, Wednesday will be a WOW day.  Make sure to get a WOW pass from any of your teachers for whom you need to make up or redo work.  There is no late start on Thursday, however.

Since this is the last week of the six weeks, I will do a journal check this week. Make sure that your journals are up to date and left in the room so that I can access them for grading.

Don't forget that next Monday (Feb 18) is a student holiday.  I hope that you enjoy your 3 day weekend.

3d Printing Challenge Update
The IMAPS conference for this month has been postponed, so the time pressure is off.  However, we are going to continue the challenge. If you are interested and have not signed up yet, there is still time.  Go to this link and give me contact information so that I can let you know when information comes out.  We will assemble a kit of parts that you can use and give to each team that will include an LED light, watch battery and battery holder, and some amount of ink.  Each team will experiment with the ink and the printer to vet out various approaches and then select the one that they feel has the best chance of success.  Then, you will design with that approach in mind, evaluate and even redesign. Remember that your design not working doesn't mean the project didn't succeed.  We are exploring territory here that hasn't been developed yet, so knowing the pitfalls and problems is in itself a success.  Check out the history of the rocket industry.  Today, we send humans and equipment in to space with regularity, but the industry spent years and years in "failure" as rocket after rocket exploded or rose a few feet in the air and then sank back and crashed back in to the ground.  After each failed attempt, the teams analyzed what went wrong and solved the problems - one at a time - to create the scientific and engineering success that we all know today.

We will start meeting weekly with the Novacentrix engineers and possibly others to exchange knowledge.  They will be able to share with us their knowledge of the conductive ink, and we will share with them our findings about how it interacts with the 3d printing materials and process.

Week of Feb 4

We are continuing to work on the train parts as we will assemble the parts this week in to an assembly (iam) file.  Be sure that you are choosing the correct orientation for your parts - in other words - thinking about the parts before  you start sketching in Inventor.  Also, be sure that you have finished the CAD Models activity (5.5) so that I can grade them.  I will also begin grading parts of the train.  Finally, be sure that you are making notes and observations in your journal on a regular basis, even if we do not have class notes each day. 

Paying for college is expensive.  RRHS' PTSA is hosting an information session to help you (and/or your parents) pay for college without going broke.  Check out the link or visit the PTSA home page for more information.

This week has both WOW on Wednesday and Late Start on Thursday.  

Last desperate plea for Semi High Tech U.  This is an incredible opportunity for our you to explore the life of an engineer in a high-tech company and get good advice about how to best prepare yourself for a technical career.  The deadline for applications is this Wednesday  I will be glad to answer any questions or help you in any way that I can because I know you would enjoy the experience as well as learn from it.