User:Cpwallen: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:14, 1 November 2019

About me

I am a fourth-year undergraduate student, currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at Michigan Tech. I have been involved in the Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology (MOST) Research Group for almost a year. I am also involved with Advanced Metalworks Enterprise (AME), Materials United (MU), Water Polo CLub, and Roller Hockey Club. This will be my second year as a member of AME, and I have worked on one project with the enterprise so far. I have also worked with Consumer Product Manufacturing (CPM) Enterprise on the nanoMAG Hockey Blade team, and BoardSport Technologies (BST) enterprise on the Smart Board team. This semester, I am taking three MSE classes: Semiconductors, Materials Characterization II, and Materials Processing. Open source technology is new to me, but I am looking forward to learning about its growing amount of real-world applications. Composite materials and recycling have always been of great interest to me. My current dream job is to work with composite materials to make stronger, lighter, and more durable sports equipment, especially hockey sticks. I have volunteered for many recycling/conservation related activities with my Boy Scout troop while on the path to Eagle Scout.

Past Projects

Glass-polymer composite 3-D Print (current project)

This is my first project relating to open source technology. I am working in the MOST Research Group to fabricate a 3-D printable polypropylene-glass composite. Recycled materials in the form if granulated polypropylene and powdered soda-lime glass are used for this project to improve sustainability. The goal is to be able to improve the mechanical properties and dimensional qualities of 3-D printed composite parts compared to those of neat (pure) polypropylene. Tensile bars of 0-50 weight percent glass (in increments of 10% glass) are being 3-D printed on a Lulzbot TAZ6 for initial mechanical testing. This project is also my first experience with 3-D printing and I am very much enjoying it. My research with this continues for the summer term, funded by a SURF fellowship.

SURF project work

I worked in the MOST lab under a SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) in the summer of 2019. My project work for SURF was a continuation of my glass-polymer 3-D printing project work from this past school year. Composites of varied glass filler content were fabricated and extruded into filament for 3-D printing.

Smart board

In this project, I helped design a “smart” snowboard by integrating various electrical sensors into the core of a snowboard. The board is to be connected via Bluetooth to a smart watch that the rider wears to give the stats about his/her runs on the slopes. Max speed, jump height, and rotation are some of these. The system also includes a homing beacon so the rider can be easily located in case of an emergency.

AM nodules

For this project, the team was partnered with ArcelorMittal, who were experiencing problems with their pusher slab furnaces. Under these high temperature conditions, nodules were forming the refractory ceramic material. These nodules caused gashes to form on the surface of the steel slabs, which were then rendered as defective. The team hypothesized that increasing the composition of spinel (one of the components in refractory) would arrest, or at least reduce the nodule formation reaction. The reaction was simulated in crucibles of varying composition, which were fired at the temperature where the reaction occurs. The project remains ongoing, with no concrete conclusion to the hypothesis yet. Certain trends were noticed, however, in the crucibles and how the reaction propagated.

Hockey blade nanoMAG

Create a hockey blade with a magnesium alloy insert. This helps absorb impact in order to improve puck handling and control when on the ice. Four different blades were designed. The shape was held constant, but the positioning of the insert was varied. My involvement with this project was limited, as I was not an official team member. I toured the lab and learned the process of how the blades were made, and helped with a field testing session on the rink the next day. This was to compare each of the four blade types according to performance and ease of use on the ice.

Presentations

"3-D Printable Glass-filled Polypropylene Composite from Recycled Materials" Undergraduate Research Symposium, 29 March 2019. Michigan Technological University

Delta 3-D Printer Build

Other Appropedia pages

Polymer-glass 3D print literature review
Polypropylene-glass composite mixing on hot plate :MOST

MSE4777 Mini Projects

MSE4777 Educational Aid Project

For my project, I made a slide with the four basic polymer structures on it. 
*Top left is linear polymer
*Top right is branched
*bottom left is crosslinked
*bottom right is network
This was all modeled in OpenSCAD with cube primitives and two cylinders for the network polymer (a circle with a curvature resolution of 6 is a hexagon). making a box solids for the slide and the two divider axes. The polymer chains were all done in sketcher and extruded. Each intersection between two or more lines represents a bonding site in the chain. This is a helpful tool for learning because it provides a visual for a student (as opposed to frantically copying down from a lecture slide) of the main polymer structures. It would also save the time of digging through a bunch of papers to find a printed out slide with the same information.

OSH science project

microscope slide holder

This is a fixture to hold a microscope calibration slide onto the print bed of a 3-D printer. This can be used in conjunction with a USB microscope to precisely measure warping at the edges of 3-D printed parts. This is especially useful when printing with polymers such as polypropylene. this slide holder has a shape similar to that of two L-brackets together with a 0.5 mm slot in the middle. this is to ensure the design is 3-D printable but that the slot is not too large that the 0.1mm thick slide will move around too much.

@@ Line 42: / Line 42: @@
 |Image:Rockwall.JPG|[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3909216 Rock Wall 3-D Model]
 |Image:Yooper print fail.jpg|Yooper print fail
+}}
+==MSE4777 Educational Aid Project==
+ For my project, I made a slide with the four basic polymer structures on it.
+ *Top left is linear polymer
+ *Top right is branched
+ *bottom left is crosslinked
+ *bottom right is network
+ This was all modeled in OpenSCAD with cube primitives and two cylinders for the network polymer (a circle with a curvature resolution of 6 is a hexagon). making a box solids for the slide and the two divider axes. The polymer chains were all done in sketcher and extruded. Each intersection between two or more lines represents a bonding site in the chain. This is a helpful tool for learning because it provides a visual for a student (as opposed to frantically copying down from a lecture slide) of the main polymer structures. It would also save the time of digging through a bunch of papers to find a printed out slide with the same information.
+{{gallery
+|width=180
+|height=135
+|lines=1
+|Image: Polymer_Structures_OpenSCAD.JPG|Polymer structures
+}}
+==OSH science project==
+===microscope slide holder===
+This is a fixture to hold a microscope calibration slide onto the print bed of a 3-D printer. This can be used in conjunction with a USB microscope to precisely measure warping at the edges of 3-D printed parts. This is especially useful when printing with polymers such as polypropylene. this slide holder has a shape similar to that of two L-brackets together with a 0.5 mm slot in the middle. this is to ensure the design is 3-D printable but that the slot is not too large that the 0.1mm thick slide will move around too much.
+{{gallery
+|width=180
+|height=135
+|lines=1
+|Image: Slide_holder.JPG|Microscope slide holder
 }}