Hi Guys,

Here is a link for a design that I made to help the way we handle binders as trash.

Modular Binders

If you have any questions please comment on this blog or on the website.

Wiffle Ball Cannon!

For the last project of summer, I made a cannon. Not just any cannon... a Wiffle Ball Cannon! I got the idea from an article in Popular Science magazine.

From Popular Science.

For this project we used a 10 foot long PVC pipe for the barrel and an elbow to connect a leaf blower to pressurize the system. One thing I didn't like about the original design was the use of duct tape to seal the tubing, so my dad took some measurements and 3D printed a part as a connector.
 

 We held the printed adapter in place with bungee cords. 

With the leaf bower running, when we drop a ball down the loading tube (see diagram below), it will go flying out of the barrel!

Unfortunately, when we first tried it out, the 3D printed part broke in two since the whole assembly weighed a whopping 30 pounds! Using duct tape has the advantage of making the joint air tight and flexible. We mounted the cannon on sawhorses so that it was at waist level, allowing us to fire the ball at a batter's strike zone.

Here we test fired some wiffle balls and a plastic soda bottle:

Another mod we made was a retaining pin to hold projectiles in place while the pressure builds up in the barrel. Now we have a machine gun!

We showed it to our neighbors during our Labor Day Weekend block party and they all liked it!

I hope you do, too!

School Coming Up!

I have the first day of school in a few days, so I want to reflect on my summer before that wretched day comes (school)!

Let's start off with the camps I went to! I went to Camp Grossman, Camp Kingswood, The Next Stop, and Camp Extreme! I would have to say that Camp Extreme and Camp Kingswood were the best camps I went to this summer. Camp Kingswood is an overnight camp; it was my second year there and I went for two weeks. I had a lot fun and made new friends. This place is a Jewish camp, so we keep kosher and have services (not the best thing in the world :-) ). Even though it's a Jewish camp, we still have a lot fun, such as COLOR WAR!! Color War is like field day: we have four teams and we compete in different events, like swimming, basketball, soccer and all sorts of fun activities. I was on the WHITE TEAM!! Of course the White Team won (because of me) but the other teams did well, too.

Now, onto Camp Extreme: this is is a Newton camp (I think it's the best one), and features "extreme" activities. We go on adventures (field trips), like hiking and riding on "Codzilla", a fast boat in Boston Harbor. We also went on other trips, such as to Water Wizz, the 10th best water park in New England, and to Kimball Farm for golf and ice cream. There's nothing more to say about this camp other than “BEST NEWTON CAMP EVER”!!

Camp Grossman was fun, too, except for one thing: the activities were just not right for my age group. What I did at Grossman were not the things I enjoy doing during my summer break. For example, sports: I like doing sports, but some counselors there forced me to attend the ones I don't like. This meant I was wasting my time there. 

Then we have the vacation part of my summer which I am going to skip writing about, just because it is too long and complicated. (unless people want to know; if you do, leave a comment below).

Wish me luck for school!

Fake Magic Card (I think) And Camp Kingswood!!

I just got back from Camp Kingswood. It was fun but I got this new Magic the Gathering card, Bayou. Usually this card is worth $160. But this one dosn't look right.

Real Card

 Mine has a green background in stead of the grayish brownish one. It also feels like it was painted. Can anyone crack this case?

Anyways, Camp was fun. I found out about a lot of new activity's I like to do. One is street hockey. Another few is lacrosse, and tennis. I might just try to get on a team for Lacrosse or Street. And try to get better at Tennis.

Fails!

During the process of making and printing stuff from our 3D printer, we made a lot of fails! Here is a list of them that my DAD did:

• While trying to hammer a piece into a rod, he cracked the piece.
• Deleted all the firmware on the circuit board.
• Cracked a foot of a Robot.
• And more I can't remember!

Now the mistakes I did:

• Dropped a Robot and his head came off.

Also we printed a cute little elephant and robot. We first had a few difficulties due to Slic3r. Then we fixed it by "correcting" the slicing code. After we did that, we started making a lot of them! I even gave one away!!!

Again, also the 3D printer failed today! One of the pieces that turns a gear to move the printer up and down, was STRETCHED!!! We don't know what happened but I'll keep you posted!

BTW: I will post photos of the FAILS later!!

Finally Finished!!

                                               We finally finished our 3D printer!!

My dad did break one thing. one of the plastic pieces wouldn't slide in to a pole so he hammered the pole in. Doing so he cracked the plastic piece. DAD! Surprisingly it still works, which is good. Here is a video of our first print!

My 3D printer is here!

Well, it has been pointed out that having a blog is kind of useless if I don't post to it. Instead I've been using Instagram since it's easy to put up a picture with a short message and then I can reply to the responses:

However, my last photo led to a lot of questions so I think it's better to use this blog since I want to keep track of what I'm doing. I'll probably create a separate page for the work I do in 3D printing, but first, some background...

Why did I get a 3D printer? 

I've always been interested in Legos, especially the military and police sets. Getting enough figures and weapons to build my models was hard and often I would just practice using the Lego Digital Designer software to create scenes. Then in 2010 (when I was eight years old), my Dad showed me an article in Wired Magazine about how BrickArms was building realistic weapons for Legos and how Makerbot was producing a $1000 3D printer suitable for the home user.

We thought that being able to actually create a custom Lego from something I drew would be really cool, but we couldn't afford to make them. 

In 2011 I started hanging out at MIT's Edgerton Center where I could get access to some neat technology, and in February 2012 I saw a demonstration of a 3D printer at Boston's Museum of Science. 

We chatted with one of the printer owners afterwards and got the idea that building one from scratch the way he did would be frustrating. In May 2012 we saw another Wired article on the Solidoodle printer that brought the price of an assembled unit down to $500. The instructors at the Edgerton Center thought this could be a good product, but suggested we wait to see how it turned out, since they had been early adopters of a Makerbot Thing-O-Matic, and had not had much success with it.

Finally, that brings us to 2014: I saw a Makerbot ad for their top of the line model printing a helmet: 

This was the one that I wanted! But when Dad saw the price ($7,000), he pointed out that if I learned to use the software first, then I could print things out at MIT or on-line, or even at our town's public library. I tried to sign up for a printing class at the library, but they were all full. So we went down to the Makerbot store in Boston and paid $25 for a private class where I used Tinkercad software to make my Mom a samurai helmet! (Actually, I only made her a picture frame for her graduation...).

Then I downloaded some design files from Thingiverse and sent one of a chip bag clip to the library to be made. Once I did all this, then Dad was willing to buy a printer!! Well actually, he made a deal with me to get a Printrbot kit if I would assemble it by his birthday (tick,tick, tick) and get something printed out by Father's Day (tock, tock, tock). We'll see how it all turns out...(but I hope he'll give me a hand the same way he helped me out with this post!)