construct

This week has been extremely productive, maybe break helped. Upon meeting with the whole team (minus Jason who is far away- and in touch), we finalized the design and the last materials we would need to buy. We made a schedule of when certain things would need to be accomplished, and divided work. Johanna and I have been gathering inspiration and documentation for the visual that will aid in explaining the project, and Michelle and I worked on the white paper. Chris showed up and taught me and Michelle to saulder, and we sauldered our solar panels in series.

We have example pieces routed, and have fit everything together, made adjustments, and a new file. Chris and Johanna tested the servos, and it appears as though the smallest servos will (unbelievably and hopefully) work to turn our panels. This is very good news, assuming all goes well.

The idea to create a sandwich with two materials came from the weight constrictions of our servos and our desire to hide the wires. We would not be able to use a solid piece of plastic or wood, and to cleanly hide the insides of our project, we may need to do layers similar to the layers of MDF in our previous module hexagon smartsurface.

Our final materials are plastic and fomrica, which allow us all that we desire! We have routed compartments for the solar cells, and the fomrica acts as a skin, protecting and hiding it from the viewer. The panels themselves are looking much better than I was expecting, and the biggest obstacles that remain will be the routing, the construction of the base, and the actual piecing everything together.