A Trip to the Think[box] -- Pre-Project -- January 27th, 2023

(Writing about a week late)

The Friday before last Ben and I went down to the Think[box] after school to look at some of the facilities and maybe get scheduled to do some training. Earlier that morning we had checked on the Think[box] website for training availability, but, despite opening that morning at 12am, they had been booked for the entire month. Mr. D gave us some contacts (Ainsley and Ian) to get in touch with when we arrived. We drove down, parked, and got surprisingly easy access to the facilities. Once we were inside we asked one of the lab techs whether Ainsley or Ian was available, and after waiting a while and exploring some of the available equipment, Ainsley came up to meet us. She told us that while she wasn't in charge of the training schedule for the 4th-floor equipment, she could show us who was. We went up to meet Misha Villanueva (who left early that day so we didn't see him), and eventually, we met Jason Bradshaw, who played a supervisory role on that floor. We told him about our rough, fuzzy vision of a scaled-down turbofan jet engine, and, understandably, he chuckled a little bit, but after we told him that we were hoping to get trained 4 months in advance, his view seemed to shift. We chatted a little bit about training, and he gave us his and Misha's business cards to schedule some training later on. He told us waterjet training usually takes about half an hour, but welding will take a full three hours. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog #1 -- Pre-Project -- May 8th, 2023

     Behind this project personally was a combined interest in my family legacy and engineering. My grandfather worked as a jet engine designer at General Electric for many decades, and since my childhood, I've always been fascinated by his work. As I grew up, that fascination coincided with my genuine curiosity in STEM subjects, particularly engineering. Taking classes like physics and chemistry has begun to satiate this curiosity, but in many ways, this project is an extension of my own curiosity. In this project, I hope to create a jet engine, but more broadly I hope to get a better understanding of the engineering process on a broader level. I want to be able to understand exactly what undertaking a big problem by breaking it down into smaller steps and troubleshooting them looks like.      Essentially, I want to answer the question: How does one undertake a massively complex project by breaking it down into smaller problems and working through them? Bu...
Read more

First Meeting with Mr. Adamczyk -- Pre-Project -- February 9th, 2023

 Yesterday, we had our first meeting with Mr. Adamczyk to discuss our project. We expected to have a 30-minute discussion about what we wanted to accomplish and how we were planning to do it, but the phone call ended up last 1 hour and 45 minutes. Mr. Adamczyk asked us about our goals and why we were interested in doing this project, explained some physics and math about turbofan jet engines, expressed his concerns about safety, and nudged us into pursuing a project with a ducted fan rather than a turbofan or turbojet. His concerns around safety were due to the high temperature of burning jet fuel and the manufacturing capabilities necessary to produce balanced spinning parts. He gave us a lot to think about in the direction of our project and we will likely be meeting with him on a biweekly basis from now on. Here is a summary of the notes we took during the meeting:  The notes are about jet engines and their types, components, efficiency and history. Some topics covered are:...
Read more

Blog #3 (Ben) -- Reflection on Design Process and Preliminary Testing -- May 16th, 2023

Image
               These are the drawings from our designs of the full model, inlet, impeller, and diffuser. As a quick review of the function of each part: the inlet is vital for the efficiency of the impeller, the impeller brings in air, and the diffuser channels the air into the correct place and makes sure the air is traveling in the correct way (no spin).      Our design process was quite smooth despite having to both work on the same file. We used Fusion 360 and shared all of our files with each other so we could work on them at any time. We were able to use an online design for the impeller, and Nikhil designed the inlet flange and diffuser based off that impeller. We chose the design for the impeller that we did because it was used to test rocket engines so we assumed it was an efficient design. I also enjoyed making the drawings in Fusion so that they can be easily understood and helpful.      On 5/16, ...
Read more