Mendelmax 2.0 HAS ARRIVED!

My kit showed up on Valentines day!  I hot footed it down to the office to pick it up between classes, and here's what I got.

Surprisingly smallish box, but heavy.  Lots of aluminum in there, and several pounds of stainless hardware!



Very efficiently packed- everything was tightly wrapped up and looks to have made its voyage in great shape.



First things first, print a set of instructions, available here through google docs: http://www.makerstoolworks.com/suppo...ssembly-guide/ .  Keep in mind, the instructions are a work in progress right now and there are several others like me that are making suggestions and changes to them as we assemble our kits. 



Here's a breakdown of all of the parts in the box.

Hardware. Not pictured is a box of washers, and also a set of allen wrenches- the cool ones with the balled ends for getting in hard to reach places!  Everything, as you can see, is clearly labeled and very well sorted out.



More specialty hardware. I was afraid to open the bag for fear that I'd loose something...  It has the belts, bushings, bushing housings, "cars", derlinger (?) nuts, couplers, and all of the fancy odd-ball hardware.



Printed parts.  Not sure why the bearing was in the bag with these, but there you go.



Laser cut parts.  Most of them are of excellent quality.  Anodizing looks good- a few minor scratches here and there but nothing I'm worried about.  There was one part that the laser cutter didn't make very clean cuts on (at least, that's my opinion), but it its 100% functional so I'm not worried about it.



Extruded parts and rails. Not much to say here, they all looked great, and cut pretty much perfectly to square.



Heated bed parts.  Aluminum sheet for a heat spreader at the far right, sheet of glass (survived the shipping!) in the middle, and the heater on the left.



AND- some pretty darn cool customer service and a bit of BLING.  If you can't read the letter, they threw in $5 just in case some hardware was missing so I could go purchase it.  So far (and I'm actually getting close to done with the kit as I type this) I haven't had any missing parts.



I got kit # 6 of 40.   Let the fun begin!

As I mentioned, I have a lot of this already done, and am now typing up the assembly process.  There are a TON of pictures already posted on my thread on adventure rider here:  http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=854167 .  I will continue to post pics there first to help organize my thoughts, and then re-post them here with more details on the assembly process.

dorkpunch cafe

Update on the dorkpunch cafe.  Been a heck of a learning experience.  I've already posted a few pics of the windscreen, seat bump, and part of the tank.  I have learned a LOT about hammering and forming aluminum, and am even comfortable enough now with the edge former that one of my students is trying a project out on it (a Captain America shield).  Used the radius fingers I built to make rounded edges on the tank.  Keep practicing the TIG after school and I'm getting better but as you will find out a little later in this post, I have a long ways to go (and a need for a better machine).

Here's where we're at.  You've already seen the windscreen:





and the seat bump:





Here was the first attempt at the seat bump.  I was trying to make compound (?) curves... a little beyond my capabilities right now.








I made a seat pan out of some scrap wood and mounted my seat bump to it.  The sheet metal on the wood covers a cutout so the wood sits down over the shape of the frame.  The wood will be covered with a thin foam and then a custom sewn (yup, going to teach myself how to sew...) seat cover.  The "lid" will be hinged at the bottom under the seat cover so I can keep papers and maybe a spare plug or oil in there.  Haven't decided on a tail light yet.











Next was the tank.  I had drawn up an idea in Sketchup and had some fairly accurate measurements.  I used those to make the paper tank for test fitting and to see how I like the style.  I wasn't sold on the shape, but I figured the bottom of the tank wouldn't change so I started there.









Tacked it together with my TIG and started on the top.  I already posted a few pics of this so here are a few of the old ones along with a few new.  I fully expected to have to re-do the tank a time or two, but its turning out a lot better than I expected.











I think these next few pics look GREAT, which of course means I'm about to screw something up.









So... You see where I tacked the back half of the tank to the front?  Well, I thought I was getting along well enough with my welder to give it a go.  I still can't get pretty beads consistently on the this stuff, but I figured this part was going to get ground down smooth anyways so what could it hurt?

It became painfully obvious that my welder coupled with my (lack) of skills is not going to work for this project.  My welder only goes down to about 30 amps.  I think thats about the max I want to start, and then it needs to drop to maybe half that.

I'm embarrassed to post these but here you go anyways.  If you look really close you can see a crack at the back edge of the weld where I ground through trying to get it flat.  I didn't take any pics of the underside but there are some huge nasty boogers hanging off the inside from piling the filler in to keep from blowing holes.  Yuck.






I tried a couple of corners too.  They turned out okay, but still have the nasty boogers inside from too much rod.




Oh well... hack the back part off just in front of the weld and start over.  I'm *almost* back to where I was.





Progress, bit by bit.  Only get a few minutes here and there before I go home or a little more time on a weekend if I go in, so I fully expect this project to take at least another three years.

Pinewood Derby, Year 2!

The results are in!

Had our second pinewood derby this morning!  We kind of forgot about it until a week ago so the car was a little rushed...  Isaac came up with a pretty good design, and then on the way to the shop drew a totally different design on the side of the car.  It turned out pretty nice.















The races this year were great- had some fellow with an AWESOME track setup come in and run the races- the kids loved every minute of it.  Last year, the races were run on a track that was hand built probably 40 years ago, only had two lanes, and one of the lanes was noticeably slower than the other so each race had to be run twice- once in each lane just to be fair.  Kids still had fun on it, but they got a little ansy waiting for their turn.

This years track had all the bells and whistles- instant replay photo finish, time recording, and speed calculations converted to scale speed.  He even gave us a printout after the race of all of the times, which will also be posted up later on his website:  pwderbyracing.com !

















He even won 3rd place!  We had two different groups racing together, I think the other group was quite a bit faster but I'm not going to complain!






The hard part now is going to be keeping him from playing with the car... I think they have "regional" tournament in another few weeks.  He got invited last year, but had already destroyed his car.

Here's a vid of the race.  Love the instant replay!  He won at 176 mph.




After the races were all done, he brought out the "circles of death".



Isaac's made it through the loops both times, and after it was all over the guy used his car as a good design example.  He thought that was pretty cool.

That's all for now, all though I do plan on posting an update on the Cafe project later today or tomorrow.








 

Student Projects

Just finished up the Lego Robotics unit with my Tech and Design 2 class.  They did a great job for how little time we had to build and program!  Wish I could have had them work more closely with my FLL Teams, they could have taught each other a lot.






I let them do a demolition derby before we took them apart... They quite enjoyed that part.




Also got the first batch of air engines done!  We have several up and running, but they were dissassembled for welding.  Mine is the one on the left, the other two are students.  Not bad for a bunch of 8th graders!




The end of the tri marches ever closer.  Just started leathers in one class and bicycle repair in another- LOTS left to do!

One last thing- real quick update on the Mendelmax 2.0.  I got an email from Maker Tool Works the other day saying they had discovered a bug in the beta kits and were in the process getting parts made to fix it. I opted to have the original parts shipped now so I can start assembling- the new parts will be free of charge other than shipping- part of the deal with it being a "Beta" kit.

The kit wasn't even originally supposed to ship until yesterday, so they aren't too far behind. I understood up front that the printer is still under development and that this was a possibility, so I'm not too worried. Still havent seen hide nor hair of the drivers and controller board though... getting a little worried about that.  Hopefully more info coming soon!

Di Acro Radius Fingers, Part 3.

Finished them up, and they halfway work!

I made another pipe just like the one in the last post, and added a few extra bar mounts.  The next issue I had to overcome was the fact that with spring back, the brake wouldn't get me anywhere near a 90 degree bend.  Of course, that means drilling more holes and cutting more pieces.







I attached those pieces to the folding blade...




And then welded a rod to them that sticks up maybe 1/4" above the edge of the blade.




The idea being that the bar is up higher than the top of the fingers, and can push the metal being bent past 90 degrees to accomodate for spring back.

Seems to work...











Those are pics of an aluminum tank I'm working on for my "cafe" racer...  First attempt.  I doubt it will turn out the way I want it, but thats the way the learning process goes.  Gotta make scrap sometimes to make something nice. 

I'm hoping to use the radius fingers for tool box lids, but they are definitely going to need beefing up first.  On my list of things to do.

Thoughts on Teaching: Year 4.

Halfway through my 4th year and absolutely loving it. It's always crazy busy- between coaching a Lego robotics team, getting projects organized, maintaining tools in the shop, making sure all of the supplies stocks are adequate, and trying to jump through all of the insane hoops provided by the government and now getting ready to teach an evening community class... It's tiring. That said, again, I'm loving it.

 I feel like I'm finally getting down how to balance classroom management but still maintain a fun environment where kids can work, do their own thing, and have something to show for it. Long ways to go still, but progressing in the right direction.

One of my favorite aspects of teaching so far is all of the things I've taught myself. I started teaching these classes with a fairly basic understanding of several different subjects and almost NONE in some of them. Now I feel very confident in the all of them- I can get pretty fancy in Sketchup, I understand how the Lego robots work and can troubleshoot and program them fairly quickly, sheet metal working is a breeze, my welding has increased leaps and bounds, and I've learned even more about small engines in the process of figuring out how students can screw them up.

 What does that give me? A desire to build. To go further. To continue. I remember Nintendo had a commercial when I was growing up- it showed this cube of letters at the end really quick and I could never figure out what the heck it said... I finally did and I like it.

Seems like I'm at the next level, and I'm looking forward to the challenge. Lots of fun things coming up- talked management into letting me add a 3D printer this year, and its on its way. Can't wait to build that and get it working! Currently teaching a new 8th grade class- where we actually get to weld a LOT and we're building some pretty cool working model air engines. Looking at expanding in the CAD area to a more professional program- Rhino or Solidworks- neither of which I have a clue how to work but would love to figure it out.

There are long days, there are the students that like to do things just to tick you off, but at the end of the day I usually still want to come back the next. If I don't, sticking around for a while tinkering on some new project to show my students usually changes that. There's always some lame politician, some other distraction you have to deal with, always seemingly pointless hoops to jump through. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and gitr done. That reminds me... There's a few things I have to get done.

Sorry to be all rambley, wasn't intending to write a discourse. Anyways, that's the state of affairs in the dorkpunch garage. Keep your stick on the ice.