March 11, 2016

An example of a 3D printed tower.

At 2:15, Austin (club president) starts the meeting, welcomes new members, and introduces a new, multi-week project regarding 3D printing towers and testing them. This idea is building off of the paper towers from last week. Austin briefly describes SolidWorks, the program groups will be using to 3D print their towers. 

After laying down some ground rules for the project regarding the minimum and maximum height, amount of plastic available for use, and internal designs, various ideas of towers are sketched up, and printing techniques are discussed. As Austin thinks about the point system of judging towers, club members get into groups.

Thinking about towers' inner support structures.

2:31 – Sean and Ilya show up late. Cough cough!

At 3:15, a couple of groups finish sketching their designs, and Austin declares the meeting officially adjourned, though members are always welcome to hang around for a while longer. We look forward to the next club meeting!

February 26, 2016

At 2:11 pm, the club's president, Austin, introduced a design competition scheduled for that day. Members were to get into groups of 2-3 and design a tower (using no more than 10 pieces of paper, 2 ft of tape, and 5 rubber bands) that could hold up at least 1 textbook. The towers had to be at least 15 inches tall. 

Two teams hard at work on their paper towers.

  









After approximately 1.5 hours, the testing and judging of the towers began. Only two towers were able to hold 1 textbook. Congratulations to Austin Djang and his cylindrical tower, as well as Ilya Kravchenko and Sean Allen's five-columned construction. 
 

Five columns design by new members Ilya & Sean.

After a brief discussion on projects for the next club meeting (involving designing constructing towers using 3-D printing), the meeting was officially adjourned at 3:56. As always, members were encouraged to stick around. We look forward to seeing everybody in two weeks. 

One group's paper tower.