Adventures in Collaboration

So personally for me this was a bit of a confusing situation.  Writing our group mission and values and the way we planned to work wasn’t incredibly crazy, but it seemed we were getting mixed signals from the professors.  Clearly this is a collaborative class and we want to utilize multiple majors and how the work together.  I think this best worked when a good portion if not all of the group was present so that we could offer ideas to each other and fill in design gaps and plan appropriately for things like mechanics, etc.  But the week before Karl seemed to be giving us a hard time asking if having the whole group together was really beneficial to the projects.  On the one hand, there are given times when there may not be enough tasks for everyone there (rarely in my option, but…) but if we all break away into our majors and just come and do the tasks we feel comfortable with, isn’t that defeating the whole purpose of the class?  What are we learning from each other by showing up in our majors and contributing skills we know.  That’s why it was helpful to learn to laser cut or to know a little info about a rhino file or work on making a motion sensor in class.  So I was just really confused.  Yes inefficiencies needed to be addressed but it seemed that working in a whole group was heavily criticized and I just couldn’t see why.  When we can all brainstorm it seemed to help the group.  We decided that we would keep detailed notes and send out emails to catch everyone up if we worked in smaller groups (which generally worked pretty well) and we would delegate tasks and try to work around thinks like exams and studio (which we did, but usually putting more work on the remaining members).  We also set out guidelines for designing form (and mechanics) alone and letting that evolve quite a bit so that we wouldn’t get stuck assigning some higher purpose to our project and sabotaging helpful development to the design.  Communication was something we wanted to strive for as well in our group.  At this point it seems we’re getting along and working together pretty well so it wasn’t too difficult to write our contract.

So the critique was definitely massively painful for week two of the dual axis solar tracker.  We received a lot of criticism for not actually getting our thing to work and that we had clung to a design that was not successful the first week.  Karl made some comment that he couldn’t believe we were still discussing this car visor idea.  But he did make some good points that as a group we had experienced two extremes.  On the one hand we spent the first week making a thing, a form and letting it evolve without any sort of story until the end.  That was far more successful.  The second week we had an idea of what this should be and what it should solve and it totally blocked us from designing something particularly creative and functional.  I suppose he took some sort of pity on us, exhausted as we were and having tried so hard to make this thing work.  He called our group heroic, which I would later find totally insulted most of the guys in our group.  John was totally taken aback by our apparently insane circuitry.  Here I had been impressed that Chris created something so tiny and complex that could move on the track.  John was upset that we didn’t see how crazy it was and how it would hold us back.  Unfortunately this is kind of an issue because most of the circuitry and coding is placed entirely on Chris with some coding help from Dan.  I wish we knew better how to help him, but I know Pat, Simon, and I are much better at all things design and construction.  Diana seems to not know a whole lot about arduino or creating circuits.  While we can look at guides and tutorials, I think electronics is definitely somewhere where we get stuck.  Overall, it was a learning experience, to be the one group that didn’t have something working.  But I feel it was a good transition into the following week when we would design the dynamic of our group and our mission for the six-week project.

Week two of the solar tracking device was a really taxing one.  We had come off the week before with some great feedback and ideas for new directions we could go.  Unfortunately I was not able to be at the Sunday meeting because of a service project.  Simon had come up with a cool alternate idea, but I’m pretty sure he was overruled and it was decided that we were going to make this solar tracking device actually work.  I was instantly nervous upon hearing this, but we had decided this week to start off strong to try to get the electronics working in time.  I wasn’t really on board with just tweaking the design that was so highly criticized but it was time to get on board and make this thing work.  I felt more at ease when I saw the cut file that had a more square-shaped visor with rounded edges.  The curved track looked super legit and we had a sleek gear system this time between the visor and the track attachment.  Okay, this could work.  We constructed the track with cold bonding acrylic glue which Diana was terrified would burn her fingers.  I can attest that I did get glue on my hands, and lived without being able to tell the difference.  The light blue color choice for the visor seemed to put a whole different perspective on the project.  This was not the clunky red rectangle from last week.  But pretty quickly things started to get hairy.  The gears weren’t contacting enough to actually move correctly.  We had to try to adjust the gears and re-laser cut them in order to get them working.  We were just about ready to give up on gears altogether when it seemed we had one that was going to work.  While Pat assembled the tiny pieces, we tried to assemble the frame.  First we did it with all regular nuts and bolts.  They unscrewed incredibly easily because the acrylic offers nothing to grip into.  After setting up the whole track meticulously, Simon shows up with locking nuts.  This seems like a good idea.  Again we meticulously set up all the inside pieces to prepare for the locking nuts on top and bottom of the track that will mean no turning back.  Then, it turns out, they won’t actually screw on and no matter how hard we try and with what tool, we can’t create the force to break through the plastic threading.  Still, we try to put them on tightly enough at the top to resist moving.  Somehow in this process we’ve mixed up some of the even and slightly longer or shorter of the rods we cut.  This resulted in lots of tiny changes to keep the track from warping.  Just as we thought we had finally survived this lovely challenge, we find out that with the correct gear, the sliding track attachment won’t clear the track edges.  Pat is convinced we should use some tool in the metals shop drill flex shafts to “bevel” the edge.  I instantly feel like this is a terrible idea but seeing no other way, come along to provide studio access and find the right tools.  We finally use some crazy looking triangular metal burr attachment.  The acrylic is flying everywhere and smells terrible.  As Pat and I take turns, I watch the bolts unscrew with the vibration.  All that hard work on the track, down the drain.  Finally we finish and just as we’re about to leave the studio, the visor somehow slips through our hands and hits the floor, breaking off the tiny circle attachments for the pin and gears.  Did that really just happen?  Oh yes, the project is destroyed.  We go back up to tell the group.  Simon is furious.  We have to re-laser cut part of the track and redo the tiny pieces for the visor.  Everyone sort of disperses angrily waiting for the file to cut.  Then it’s back to production.  I help with soldering which I haven’t done with a soldering gun since highschool.  I’m pretty skilled with solder chips and butane torches for small metals but it takes awhile to get back in the hang of using the solder gun.  This track solution is way better, but we watch as the hours between night and class slowly melt away.  We start twisting wires together hurriedly and preparing the spools to mechanize this thing.  Finally we’re ready to hook up to the DC motors, and we try to get it to move.  Nothing….  Are the coiled wires too heavy?  We spent so much time sawing apart breadboards and Chris made this crazy complicated circuitry that could be hidden inside and attached to the moving track (trying to design the mechanics as much as the form).  No luck.  And the gear isn’t working correctly either.  We drill a tiny hole and thread through fishing line so we can still show the angling actuation of our tracker.  Our one task was to actually get a dual axis solar tracker to function.  Here we were with a sleeker design that wasn’t all that crazy different, and it still didn’t work right.  Time for another intense critique…

Based on previous critiques with the failure of not having a story or application, we thought we were in fairly good shape coming into class Thursday.  The critique started out fine and there was some great discussion of how this might be implemented.  John had asked why it was that there was so much discussion this time around with the project.  We thought it was because we had successfully come in with a story and application this time.  Soon Geoffrey Mann was saying this could be a danger to old people inside of a car and didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  We tried to state that they could learn, but apparently this isn’t the case, the learning curve is harder as age progresses.  Next thing we knew the critique took a turn for the worse.  Karl was pretty upset that we hadn’t actually made a solar tracking device that functioned and that instead we were discussing a concept for a design.  We received some pretty harsh criticism.  This would have been fine if it were stated, for project two just make a simple solar tracking device.  We were frustrated because we had tried to adapt to feedback from previous critiques and suddenly here our project was viewed as a complete failure because we went the wrong direction.  Then either John or Geoffrey pointed out that we hadn’t actually designed this thing.  I couldn’t really disagree with that part.  While I thought our concept was very applicable to a real design problem, it was true that this thing looked terrible.  I hated how it looked.  I had wanted us to design something sleeker, more elegant, more clever than a large red rectangle on a mess of a framework.  But Pat created the file and it all kind of got overruled and somehow none of us really said anything because we were so bent upon getting a prototype ready and ideally working for class, no matter how rough.  Later Karl, Geoffrey, and Max came around group to group giving feedback.  This would have been a brilliant idea except that at the same time John took students to get trained in the fibers studio.  Here we were getting essential feedback and HALF OUR GROUP WAS GONE.  This was very upsetting because we had to try to communicate the feedback afterwards and it was harder to convince the group members that weren’t there that our design needed to be changed.  The professors talked to us about pushing the envelope and thinking of something elegant that you would want to see deployed.  Something light such as fabric in an interesting form.  They talked about sleek car commercials and how ridiculous our big red clunky motorized panel would look.  Shtein talked about how he could envision something for the car to shade kids easily and how this had him thinking.  Maybe we needed to break out of the car for this design.  I think Simon, Chris, and I were really excited about the possibilities.  Simon had sketched rings of some sort of table that could expand.  I was imagining little flat colored modules expanding out into intricate patterns to shade that could expand out inside a window and retract with the sunlight.  As soon as the rest of the group came back, it was hard to keep that spirit up.  We decided to all work on sketches over the weekend and regroup on Sunday.

Next came the form discussion.  Would it slide on a track?  How could this be attached inside of the car?  I suggested we use a circle as a form that could sort of freely move inside the car.  This idea was quickly shot down by Pat.  There was a reason for the rectangle.  But was there really?  Could we do something more of a square?  For awhile the idea was entertained of a smaller unit that would have telescoping panels that could slide out to reach the sun.  But we soon realized the motion of flipping over to the side of the car and retracting and shooting back out was not a design solution by any means.  Our meeting ended and eventually Pat took over general design the next day.  Our first model was just a bulky rectangle of acrylic we spray painted red with holes drilled in it with a smaller rectangular plate that could be hinged to the main visor.  We also cut out a few strips of acrylic to layer together to create a track and circular discs that would slide through this track. We needed some sort of holding base.  This was our first real encounter with the Merkur set.  It looked a lot easier to use then it turned out to be and sandwiching the track between panels turned out to be a little rocky but we got it to work.  We then needed to attach this whole thing to the tracks.  I cut up some copper tubing that we glued into the acrylic discs and affixed onto the back of the acrylic plate.  This took a few tries to get the height we wanted.  I believe this is the first time we used a gear attached to a servo.  Fishing line was used as a medium to pull the panel between ends of the track.  Chris has worked on a sun-dial type setup for the solar sensing cells and was using that to track light.  We ran into late night problems trying to mechanize this thing.  We stayed up incredibly late and only had minimal movement by the time we were headed into critique.

Brainstorming - What to make?

So this first week of brainstorming our dual tracking solar device had us stuck.  It was tough because it had set guidelines but seemed very broad at the same time.  Besides dual axis, solar tracking, and biomimicry focus, we could pretty much make it do anything we wanted.  Coming off of two weeks where it was stressed the importance of having a “story” and a real-world application, we were wracking our brains to try to find something for this solar tracker to actually do.  Our first meeting started off with brainstorming ideas of what a solar tracker could do.  It could focus light, deflect light, diffuse light, concentrate light, convert light to energy, attack a light, hide from the light, it could tell time, it could wake someone up.  After coming up with a whole bunch of crazy things we tried to vote on which of the ideas we felt were worth pursuing.  We had the most votes for  “telling time” and “waking someone up.”  So we went from there trying to think of how we could use a sun-dial style photo-resistor setup to tell time and then how it would wake the person.  Flashing light?  Would we put a sensor on the person’s head to detect where to shine a light?  Could you put a sensor on a pillow instead?  What if the sun weren’t out?  Would it harvest enough energy to still work in the morning?  Why would we bother using technology for this when you can use a real clock normally?  The criticisms of past weeks were still in our heads.  It had seemed like we were given the message that it had to have a pretty practical use or else it wouldn’t be worth spending the money and technology on.  So we switched ideas and thought about making some sort of shade.  The ideas thrown out for some type of shade were fairly crazy.  There was talk of releasing colored gas into a double walled glass chamber that would be a window and the gas would block out the sunlight.  Another idea suggested was colored water inside a window that would function the same.  I could just hear Max in my head ranting about why bother doing something with all kinds of money and electronics if it could be done more simply with a pre-existing design.  Clearly fabric curtains or plastic blinds are much cheaper and more efficient at shading the sun in a house-type setting.  Suddenly Diana piped up about car visors.  At first this seemed a little strange, but as we thought about it, this was a very relatable application.  Car visors are a rather large bulky rectangular shape and still never manage to quite block the sun at the angle and place you need it to.  Ironically, I had just driven home recently for my cousin’s wedding when the sun happened to be setting and spend a frustrating 3 hours in the car driving directly facing the sun and struggling because covering the sun meant blocking too much of the road and craning my neck the entire trip left me frustrated and tired.  We started to get real excited.  There was the issue of pulling the visor across or the sun hitting directly in the corner or past where you could move the visor.  If we could create something better that moved itself along with the sun and angled itself perfectly you could solve a lot of inconvenience.  We didn’t have a form, but we had a clear idea with a story and purpose.  We thought we were on our way to nailing it.

Project 1 - Final functioning prototype for Project 1 wrap up

Project 1 - Week 2 (mechanizing of chipboard module)

Project 1 - Week 1 prototypes

 For our final presentation, we wanted the model to be in all acrylic.  Pat and Simon came up with the idea of a double frame on the back to hide the servos.  We would now need hinges for the acrylic pieces since scoring was no longer an option.  Our struggle, with both the chipboard and the acrylic was having a sort of spring motion pulling back on the pyramids so that we could unfold them.  Closing the pyramids up was doable with the servos, but it didn’t work as well both directions.  We first looked into spring-loaded hinges for the acrylic pyramid faces.  We went to hardware stores, and eventually found one about 2 inches wide.  Unfortunately the spring loaded part had way too much force and would never work for what we were doing.  We also considered using bicycle tubing in order to hinge the pieces and allow for some spring back.  But it wasn’t strong enough and didn’t lock the pieces together well enough.  It just sort of flopped around.  We finally decided on regular hinges and went on a mission to find tiny hinges.  After Simon found some, we went to a few hardware stores and cleaned them out.  We would need approximately 39 hinges.  Since we were now working with a framework of units instead of just one, Pat realized the pyramids would have to share corner vertices and that merging these left an overhang.  So the overall hexagon framework was slimmed down to eliminate this.  Our first laser cut trial model didn’t match up at all with the hinges.  It also took a few cuts on the third floor lasers to get through the acrylic.  The next day we went to the woodshop to cut the file.  We had tried to make the fit between the hinges more snug, but accidentally ended up spreading the pieces apart further.  The file took forever to cut, and had gone almost all the way through, but not quite.  Pat and I spent a lot of time trying to pop out the tiny laser cut elements, but the pieces wouldn’t budge or the acrylic would eventually snap.  We found out later the laser was focused to paper, and that was the big issue.  So we bought more acrylic, finally figured out the right dimensions for the hinges, and had Jerry set the laser correctly this time.  It worked perfectly and the fit was nice and snug.  We wanted the outside faces to reflect light and not overheat so we decided to paint them white.  Red seemed like a good striking color for the inner panels to provide visual interest and high contrast when the pieces were at angles.  It was a huge team assembly effort with all the hinges and bolts and nuts.  Soon we realized that the pieces would torque slightly once hinged in and this made the vertices where all the points fell too snug at times.  To provide the spring-back of the pyramid faces, we used some pretty basic sewing elastic.  This still was a little stronger than intended, but seemed to work.  When it came time to add the strings, I think our failing was using canvas thread instead of fishing wire.  We used screw extenders on each pyramid base to provide the needed height for the string to pull up.  Unfortunately the insides of these screw extenders were threaded, and after attaching the threads and sewing them to a lead string in the base, we soon saw them snap, to our dismay.  Everything was closed at this point and we weren’t sure what to do.  Our bigger servo was also refusing to turn.  We eventually switched it to another servo and that one worked and we were able to open and close two of the pyramids that still had the canvas threads intact.  

Our setting was a farmer’s market or other outdoor type setting where you would want shelter depending on the condition, but still a good amount of natural light.  The pyramids would stay mostly closed in the morning and as the sun rose.  When the sun would get more intense, the panels would start to lower, blocking some sunlight and casting patterns on the ground.  By noon, when the sun would be the most intense, the panels would be almost completely flat / flush in order to provide shade.  They would begin to crack open again as the sun set.  Snow and rain conditions would set off the humidity sensor, causing the panels to lie flush and seal off, protecting the people inside.  All of this motion would be dependent on weather or not a person was inside the structure.  This way we would not be wasting energy when it was not in use.  Later in critique this was questioned because the inside surface might be wet from rain, or the cement hot from the sun if the unit had remained in open pyramid form up until this point.  We also thought our prototype offered a dynamic surface texture to a roof-like shelter. 

 We realize that our final model was probably overly complex with all the hardware and hinges and elastic and strings, and that’s definitely something we would have liked to change if we had continued on with the project.