While We Wait

Today we had our weekly meeting. We’re waiting on two replacement parts—a filament guide that cracked during assembly (image), and a replacement Kapton. The filament guide cracked when we attached the screws—I’ve surmised that the screw was over-tightened, which put too much stress on the part. Alex can respond to this post if I have it wrong. The Kapton we either lost or didn’t receive; we’re not quite sure.

UPDATE: So we didn't know what the heck Kapton was. It's " polyimide film developed by DuPont which can remain stable in a wide range of temperatures" (thanks Wikipedia). The picture in the instructions makes it look like the washer with three holes in it is called a "Kapton" because there's an arrow point to the washer that says in huge letters: KAPTON. So we ordered kapton and we should have ordered a washer. Metrix Create: Space saved the day; Matt gave us a spare. Hero.

Since we can’t move forward without the replacement parts, we spent the meeting discussing data collection and potential grants for this project. Beth asked us to articulate how our project connects with HCDE, so you may see a few blog posts exploring this topic.

Also, the MakerBot group has agreed to present a poster at the College of Engineering’s open house, “Discovery Days,” on April 23rd and 24th (http://www.engr.washington.edu/alumcomm/openhouse.html). Come check us out!


Here's a picture I took of the broken (middle) filament guide, because pictures are fun: