On Thursday we continued working on our pop-up book. At the beginning of class we set concrete goals for what we wanted to accomplish in an effort to be more productive in class. We decided that we wanted to have the initial circuit that we were going to put in our pop up built, and a least have a very good idea of what we wanted the illustrations to look like. I still want to make multiple pages, but I know for sure that I am getting ahead of myself. At this rate we’ll be lucky if we get one done. But at the same time, I think that if we get one page done every other page will be easier. I even have a vague idea of how to do the battery. If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year it is that I need to dial back my ambition sometimes. I usually do not have the time or skills necessary to create what I want to, and I end up disappointing myself more than anyone. The thing about Wellesley is that no one teaches us how to set achievable goals. Every ten feet there are signs that say “Women who will make a difference in the world.” Why don’t they say “women who will be employable,” or “women who will be able to pay off their student loans.” Honestly, that’s all I really want.
So, focusing on achievable goals, we worked on our circuit. Together we tried out different values of resistors to find the ones that made our lights flash at the right frequency. Then we decided to add a potentiometer to our circuit so that the user can change the rate that the lights flash, since interactivity is a requirement of this project. I think that pop-up books by nature are interactive, but perhaps not necessarily the page that we are working on right now, so this is definitely something that we need to spend more time on. When we were looking for green LEDs, all we could find were bicolor LEDs. They were actually perfect, because they are either red or green. Our professor changed our circuit so that now our lights change between red and green. I am still pretty confused about how this works, so I will have to look at it again, and perhaps I will have a better explanation later.
In the meantime, Hannah worked on creating illustrations. She made Harry and Voldemort figures, and we cut them out using the laser cutter. Somehow, cutting paper with the laser cutter was even cooler than cutting plastic. I hope that I never have to use scissors again. It took some experimentation to figure out the right settings for cardstock in the lasercutter. Eventually we found out that you need to use 20% power, 1.3 velocity, and 1000 for the square wave thing (...which I think is called dpi?). We also looked through the multiple pop-up books that illustrate how to make pop-up books in the engineering room and found out how to make the figures stand up.
Over the weekend Erin and I continued working on our pop-up book. I felt like we spent a ton of time on it (and we actually were focusing!) but got nothing done. I did cut out a Hogwarts shaped background for our Harry v. Voldemort page, and I also made a hippogriff. But, there I am getting ahead of myself again. The hippogriff is for a different page, IF we ever get around to making another one. What we need to do next is decide how we will actually attach the components of our circuits together, and how we will attach them to the batteries. From our last project we learned that this will probably take a long time.
I know this, because I am still working on our last project. The approach that I explained in my last post was working...but I am having a lot of trouble getting the coils the right height so that the batteries and and wires and everything fit within the case, but there is also enough pressure to hold the batteries in the right spot. I was also having problems with some of our wires coming unsoldered, so I had to re-solder them, and I am pretty bad soldering. The only time I’ve ever really soldered was when I was at WTP, and we made jewelry. With some luck, I got it to stick together. I didn’t realize what a pain our lantern is to put together. On a scale of 1-10 for manufacturing, I would give it a -3. But I will chalk this up to a learning experience, because I have never thought about designing something that is easy to assemble before. I always just think about making something pretty. So, we still don’t have a working lantern, or much done on our pop-up book...and we only have two days of class left. I don’t know what I am going to do. On the bright side, the weather is still kind of cold, so its not so bad spending all of time inside working on stuff.
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