Hello, Júlia here,

This week was very productive, as our team hoped, so we are very proud about the progress of the project, we morphed our options and we came with 7 solutions. Also, we made more experiments to be able to do our Pugh score table because we didn’t have any data about the cooling method, so that gave us a direction how to score our different methods of cooling. With that information we made a scale for each design criteria to be able to choose our best solution between the seven ones.

After that we noticed that the solution 2 (Ro-loop) and the solution 7 (Tracktion) had the same score (3.8), both of them have rollers and a syringe pump to apply the emulsion and fan(s) for cooling, but the difference between those two is the mechanism, so Rolloop is in a loop, the film moves while the emulsion is being applied, and Tracktion is in a track, the films stays stationary while the syringe and the roller move along the film. To decide which one we were using it we made a pro and con list (cliché but effective) considering how easy is to implement and how easy it is for our client to use it. Ro-loop won, so we moved to our low-fidelity prototyping.

We research more about depths of gears because it’s an idea that our team had while we were prototyping and we think it’s going to be very useful for our project. Another thing that came up while prototyping was if the roller that applies and smooth the emulsion in the film was really necessary to be linked in the arrangement of the gears, it could be staytionary so while the film moves along with the crank it will make that roller moves by itself. For that, as usually, we tested, and it worked! So that’s something that we maybe don’t need to worry about.

Then we move on to the calculations, how to arrange the gears, what ratio the gear that connects with the rack in pinion is bigger than the other that connects with the loop, and we found a ratio of 1:10, so to minimize that we are working with a series of gears and pulleys and that’s where we are now, so our next steep is to test our calculations by laser cutting (yey) our gears and try to make everything work. Wish us luck, cause we need it haha!

As for our weekend me and Rebeca (always together) went to Rice Village to shop, to eat hamburgers and drink beer (just me, no worry haha) and also we visited the downtown of Houston, got the metro, explored a little and it’s was pretty fun. About the 4th of July (my first one) was really cool, we hang out with SEED group in Martel College, listened to music and we ate some typical American food (hot dog, hamburgers, chips and chocolate chip cookies haha). As the sun got down we watched the fireworks from the deck of Martel and it was amazing.

I’m very grateful for being here, being part of the OEDK and experiencing a lot of new and exciting things. Let’s make some memories!

See you guys next week! Thank you.