Austin came over to my shop two weekends ago and we cut the girder linkages on the Tormach and he prepped some large pieces of aluminum so we could get ready to cut the girder legs. We’re working on building a girder front end. I’ve really been enjoying this independent study. It’s great having a student that is driven to achieve a goal and is kind and ALWAYS thankful for the time we spend working on things. I never hear a single complaint from Austin.
It seems that I hear more complaints from students these days than I did in the past. It also seems that there is always some issue that is preventing folks from achieving something or there is a bad attitude toward life and the world in general. It sometimes rubs off on me and I sense that I am getting negative. It makes me thankful for positive learning opportunities for both myself and Austin and time to share what little I know about making physical objects.
We’ve been trying to figure out how we were going to proceed with cutting this from 3/4” aluminum plate for the girder leg. The @tormach 1100 in my personal studio doesn’t have the bed travel so we cooked up some plans to cut this in the AppState physics machine shop but they’re slammed right now. We talked about making patterns and casting or even making this on the manual Bridgeport. Plan C was trying to cut aluminum on the @shopbottools CNC router. We decided that the Shopbot was our best option for cutting these since they are outside the capacity of my Tormach. I contacted former AppState ID student @alexhardison903 who works at ShopBot and he provided some feeds and speeds recommendations. We got one side of this part cut out without loosing a bit and the second side is happening now. We’ll have some clean-up but this will work for our purposes Thanks, Alex for the help.
Last Tuesday morning I met with my Industrial Design independent study students: Austin made progress on the battery box model for the electric motorcycle and we cut the battery box in foam on the @shopbottools CNC router. I generated the gcode in RhinoCAM and I cut the second set of pieces after the printmaking candidate talk. I helped Lilith’s student with rivets for a project for a different class other than metals, I helped two of my students with etching, helped one student with machining, did some computer work and responded to some questions about digital fabrication from the Chair at PennWest Edinboro. Then I had a great Zoom meeting with Cappy and Dietrich to discuss teaching and some of their plans for their program at PennWest. Then I popped these foam pieces off the router and headed home. It was a full day, on my non teaching day, but a day that was fulfilling. I always love those days when I can say that I accomplished something and my efforts were valued by the people around me. It was a good day.
I'm glad Austin and I get to discuss motorcycle design and we get to make stuff on the weekends. I’ve always seen my role as a teacher as being a facilitator for students and the ideas they have. I’m getting to do that very thing right now through this independent study. This type of activity is what got me into teaching in the first place. It’s sad that the job has gotten farther and farther away from this simple and fulfilling interaction with students. I’m just thankful for this moment in my life.
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