Blog #6 -- Meeting with Ouday Taweel -- May 30th, 2023

     During our first visit to MAGNET, Mrs. Becker put us in contact with one of MAGNET's many full-time engineers. Ouday had been interning at MAGNET as he completed his degree in mechanical engineering from Cleveland State University, and upon graduating, he was hired as a full-time engineer. On his third day on the job, we showed up seeking his help. Initially, MAGNET was just a place we wanted to tour to find out about their manufacturing processes and engineering jobs, but it soon became an impromptu shop when Mrs. Becker offered us her help. At this point, we would take anything. We were pressed for time to manufacture what seemed like a dozen parts (and what was actually about three), and we needed tools that we didn't have. She told us to come in with our designs and that she'd have Ouday try and help us out. We came in Friday after having sent the designs over earlier in the week to discover that he had already printed out all of the parts we sent him, and an even bigger surprise, two of them were printed in nylon!

    A quick tangent about nylon 3D printing. I mentioned it in an earlier blog as SLS printing, and it stands for selective laser sintering. Essentially, a thin layer of nylon powder is laid down, and then a laser passes over it to fuse together the cross-section of the part that would be in that slice of nylon. The process is repeated thousands of times, and eventually, you get a fully formed, very strong, nylon part. The best parts are that it doesn't need any supports because it is fully surrounded by powder, it is incredibly precise, and of course, the parts look amazing. The biggest downside: cost. Every kilogram of this powder costs $100, which meant that even our two smallest parts cost $20 on their own.

    To make a really long story short, Ouday helped us a LOT. With him, we: threaded the turbine hole, drilled holes for the stator in the tube, installed the pressure gauge, cut the rod to length, threaded the rod, and installed the stator into the tube. He also gave us screws to attach the inlet to the diffuser. We did all of this in just two hours with him in the MAGNET shop. We fondly remember these hours as the most productive hours of our entire project. Ouday's help is so greatly appreciated, and the project would most certainly not be where it is without him. Unfortunately, due to our huge spurt of productivity, there are not many pictures, that is, there is one:


Thanks Ouday!

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