February 22On Monday I was traveling from Dallas, Texas to San Diego, California so I was not in school on then. February 23Tuesday was my first day back in 5 days, so when I came back Rachel and I got started right away. She taught me how to sand the rings so it has a smoother finish then the other sanding machine we tried. The new way we did it, is attaching our ring to the Lathe, and getting a sanding tool. You have to turn the Lathe on a low setting, around 120 and you put the sander on the areas you want. This is a much better option because you have a lot more control of what you are doing and since the ring is spinning instead of the sander spinning, it allows you to get a smoother finish. After we smoothed the ring on both sides and on the inside, we moved into Mikes room to get the Vinyl. As we did last week, we made our sketch of the design/word we wanted on the ring and after many different attempts trying to print it right, we finally got it to work on the heat press vinyl. The only problem was that the letters didn't stick to the ring, so we held it to the ring, and tried out the heat gun to see if it would "melt" the Vinyl onto the ring, so it attaches to it. It worked, so from there we went outside and spray painted the ring black, and peeled off the vinyl. We were debating whether or not we should have left the ring with the black because we really liked the way it looked. That was all we did Tuesday since it was an X-block day schedule. February 24Wednesday we started off with putting the ring in acid. Twenty minutes later, we took it out and the etch looked really good. We took off the black spray paint, and showed it to Mike, Scott, and Rachel at the front desk. We showed the two girls our rings, and they immediately asked for 2 to buy and handed us the money. Both Rachel (my partner) and I realized how good of a business this could be, so we are deciding to sell rings at school. Today we also got the sketch of Paris's ring and printed it out on the same white vinyl and used the heat gun to stick it to the ring. We then spray painted her ring the same black and peeled off the vinyl with hers too. On Wednesday we also talked to a few people and went over to HTM to ask what we should use to seal the rings so the metal doesn't rub off on your finger. Most of the people we asked didn't have an option that was easy and available to us, so we decided to go with clear nail polish to finish the coat and so far, it is working well. February 25Thursday Rachel and I started coming up with ideas for our business as we waited for Paris's ring to etch in the acid. We also went into Liberty Station and bought clear coat nail polish to seal the rings. We re-did the coat multiple times so it didn't have a thick, goopy look to it, and so there were no air bubbles on the ring. After taking out Paris's ring, we then took off the black spray paint and coated hers too. After finishing with both of those, we then took some pictures of the ring for our future flyers for marketing our business. February 26Friday I worked on my blogs the entire period with Rachel, so we didn't work on rings today.
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February 15, 2016No School Monday-Presidents Weekend February 16, 2016Tuesday, Rachel was not here again because she was sick so I had to do the project myself since last Thursday she wasn't here either and I wanted to do actual physics. So today I got the finished cut ring we worked on last Wednesday, and we used a tool ("This little thing" as Scott named it) and put it in the middle of the ring and turned it in a circle to smooth the edges so the ring is less likely to cut you. After he taught me how to smooth it down, I then wanted to get the Heat Transfer Vinyl for the etching. I went over to Mikes classroom to figure out what I need to do to get started on it. I first had to make a design of what I wanted the test ring to have on it, so I chose to just do my name and see how that turns out. After creating a stencil of my name on Adobe Illustrator and making it the right size according to the measurements of the ring, I went over to Myles and he got it set up for the printing. We first printed it on the white Vinyl, but the first time didn't cut through the material deep enough, so we had to do it again. After it finally cut all the way through and was the perfect print, we had to take the cut pieces out and separate it from the rest of the material so I can then put it on the ring. In the middle of taking the letters out, Myles asked what I will be doing with it, so I told him how I will be sticking it to the ring and then dropping the ring in acid for it to then etch away parts of the rest of the ring. He realized we were using the wrong kind of vinyl, so we had to throw away the one we were working on, and move onto the other kind, which is the black vinyl. We re-printed it, but every time we printed it, the vinyl kept on ripping because my design was too small. I didn't get to find the solution to the problem before it was time for X-block. February 17, 2016Rachel came back to school on Wednesday, so we started off by getting her ring and then smoothing down the inside of it like what I did Tuesday. After that, we asked Scott to show us how to sand down the outside area of the ring so it won't cut people that way either. He showed us the machine, which is basically a long sand paper that moves like a very fast treadmill, the way it turns. Once you turn the machine on, you hold the ring against the sandpaper, and it will shave off the parts you want off. Scott told us to wear gloves when doing it because if your finger touches the machine, a large chunk of your skin will rip off. So we got gloves, goggles, our ring, and a cup of water. The water is for when the ring gets too hot from the rubbing of the machine, you drop it in the water to cool it off. We first played around with the machine to see what types of sanding we can do with it, smooth, different shapes around the ring, etc. We played with it until we made the desired shape. I liked the un-even, kinda funky different shape look, so for mine we kept it like that. After we did mine, we had to go on Skype with this girl named Jessie. The Skype was from 2:40-3:10. After finishing up the Skype with her, Rachel and I continued on with our rings. We then moved onto her ring and we tried to do more long, smooth edges instead of shorter, un-even edges for mine. Today was more of a practice to see what we can do with that machine, and figure out the little key's to different kinds of "cuts". After finishing Rachel's ring, we then had to clean up the class since we had Advisory schedule. February 18, 2016Not here-Out of town February 19, 2016Not here-Out of town
February 8, 2016Monday Rachel and I started off with researching how to etch our rings, which is for our final project. We heard of a couple options from Scott and Phil, so the both of us looked into what the options they said were. We had an option or two, but the ones we considered are Chemically engraving and/or using a Dremel tool. Scott said he has a Dremel tool, he just doesn't have all the size pieces we need. The Acid seems to be an easier use, and a quicker way too. So Rachel and I decided that engraving it chemically would be best. We decided to get started right away, so that's what we did. We got a piece of metal, I believe it was brass, and we wrote HTH on it with a sharpie to see the affect. We then wrapped a zip tie around the brass to keep hold of it, and dipped it in the Chemicals to let it sit there for over 20 minutes. It only did a little work to it, which is fine because we were testing to see what would be the most affective option. Here is a few of the websites we visited to learn more about the chemical engraving and Dremel Tool: February 9, 2016Tuesday we decided to test the chemicals and brass with different ways. We got some heat transfer vinyl and put it on all three of the brass. On one we spray painted it with a thick black, another one we coated it with a clear spray, and the last one we simply just put the Heat Transfer Vinyl right on it. We put all three of them in the chemicals at once so it would be even, and then applied a heat gun to all of them to speed up the process. We found out after peeling the Heat Transfer Vinyl off, that having the Vinyl by itself straight on it, was the most affective and looked the best. February 10, 2016Wednesday we made rings. We got some brass, and cut off a random chunk from it. Then we faced the brass and surfaced it in both directions, making it smooth on all sides. From there we measured out Rachel's finger, and sized the hole we were going to make according to her measurements. We then cut off the amount of ring we wanted, and realized we had enough of it to cut off a ring for me too. The rings fit our pinkies, so on our final one we will have to get a bigger size brass, but they do still work. I would say we need to sand the rings, shape them, and engrave them, but without doing those things we are pretty excited and pretty proud of them so far. February 11, 2016Thursday, both Scott and Rachel weren't here and I didn't want to do anything without both of their permission, so I worked on some coding (even though coding isn't physics, I was making sure I wasn't wasting any of my time). I then worked on this blog for the remaining time.
February 1,I wasn't at school Monday. February 2On Tuesday Rachel and I finished drawing the bolt on Autodesk Inventor. Before we finished the sketch design of it, but we finally figured out how to get the drawing of it, which there we could get the measurements we needed. We then got a 1 inch thick cylinder of aluminum and cut it to the size we need, which we chose it to be 2 inches long. After we finished cutting the aluminum to the right size, we then moved it onto the lathe where we would face the cylinder. Facing is when you take off the outer layer of your object when on the lathe, making it look smooth and have a clean cut. February 3Wednesday we read an article about Introverts and Extroverts, which was about different kinds of students. Introverts are the people who stay quiet and don't voice their opinions as much. The Extroverts are the people who talk a lot and are heard more. Since Introverts are more to themselves and quiet, people often mistake them to be not as bright as Extroverts. When someone asks a question to a group of people, an Extrovert is more likely to answer. Not that an Introvert doesn't know the answer, but because maybe they don't like the attention it will get. After reading and discussing the article within the class, Rachel and I went back to work on the bolt some more. We put the Aluminum cylinder (bolt) on the Mill, where we then shaped it to become a polygon instead of a circular shape. Since Scott was working with a lot of people, Rachel and I started to work on our proposal and final product while we waited for him to help us out. February 4Thursday Rachel and I finished the proposal, to the point where all we had to do was show him our proposal and get it approved. We went to Phil to check over it first and get critique. He gave us some good tips and new ideas both Rachel and I didn't think about. We also made the grooves in the bolt, which is called threading(images below). We did spend some time waiting for Scott, but then when it was longer than 5 minutes, we moved over to the Proposal and worked on it there to get it improved. February 5Friday we proposed our final product idea to Scott. We showed him what we came up with, and he mainly said it looked good, plus some other tips and ideas that we can do. Today we also finished the bolt. Here we cut the bolt to the right size, and faced it again. The last thing I got to do in class today was make my blog. We also had a period for outside games at the bay so we had just over one period to work on all of our stuff.
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March 2016
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