Busy busy monday!

28-11

Mondays are not nice, because they are always really busy!
Today started of with a coach meeting with Sam, with the first part being a project meeting in which everybody presented their design documents. Mine, luckily was good enough for the time being, but Bruno had a hard time. It is hard to see this happening to a project mate and I was really doubting if there is something which I needed to say or that I should just let things be.. This does remind me of how important communication is. Being able to tell what you want to tell in a clear overview is a skill which will become of a great importance during a designer's career.

It also reminded me of the unique position of the ID student at the TU/e. The process approach, learning from  other students and learning by doing are different from other ID educations, but make this one so strong. One can learn so much from others. I have learned as much from other students and their work as I have learned from assignments and other activities.

The second part of the meeting, was individual. I send an e-mail to Sam on Thursday or Friday last week that I was struggling with what he mentioned as an interaction which was too easy. I did not quite understand what he meant en though that the power of this concept is in the 'simpleness'; if something would be added/changed the focus of the design would be on another interaction in stead of the pouring-interaction. When I talked to him, he luckily said that he did not think my concept was bad, but the story did not add up entirely yet. I need to mention that the product is meant as some sort of ritual, something which needs to be done to respect the action of creating light. He also taught my showcase has a good base now of which I am really glad!

At 12:15 I joined the Educie meeting again, in which we decided to have a brainstorm and settled some unsolved mysteries of the upcoming photoshop workshop.

In the afternoon, I helped Mariette with programming the Arduino. She had not yet seen the Arduino being hooked up to a sensor, so it was the easiest if somebody could help her for a minute. It was not to hard to write the program, but it needed some smoothing. Unfortunately, another meeting was waiting before I could finish this properly, so I left Mariette on her own with the coding.

The third meeting of the day was with Rik about the SDL report. It needs to be finished! So we looked at the last things which need to happen before it is done. Thankfully, it is not that much. It is mainly the final chapter and pasting the appendices from the right documents.

And in the end of the afternoon there was the academic development again. This time it took the lecturer sooo long to make his point that it was really really boring. I have not learned anything at all this time..

Wednesday, PCB factory; report

16-11


Today on the program, continuing the report of the clock project and visiting a PCB factory, to see how they are made in the industry.

In the morning Rik and I made new text and images for the report. We really need to finish this, because other deadlines are coming up and it will be withholding us from those activities.

In the afternoon we travelled to a printing company near Helmond called V-PS. There we talked to a technician, who was kind enough to give us a tour in the factory and tell us something about the manufacturing process. This nice to see once, it made me realize that we are busy creating products which are produced in bulk, for the industry. It reminded me of the documentary 'The genius of design' which I saw during the SDL-weeks. The episode I had in mind was about the history of mass production. Really inspiring series!

Unfortunately this tour lasted for the entire afternoon, which was pretty long. Upside, Rik will get a discount on the ordering of the PCB.

In the afternoon I helped Wendy making a program in Processing. She wanted a little program that would let the mouse scare of little balls (like herding a pack of sheep). It was a nice way to see if I still understood the program and its Syntax and a way to explain the basics to Wendy. Here is the result, the problem is that it works on the x and y coordinates, which creates a rectangular hit-plane. For a natural result it should be an circular hit-plane. Since I made this in about two hours, I was pretty happy with the result!

Last part SDL weeks

03-11

Let's start with the remainder of the SDL weeks. On Thursday we tried to find out how big the damage actually was. Rik did this by measuring the resistance of the tracks with a multi-meter. There were quite a few tracks which were not destroyed, which gave us hope. Considering the time we had left (this day and the Friday) we decided that we would only create the inner circle (which contained of 20 LED's) to give a proof of concept. Of course, this also did not go as fast as we had hoped. We got all the different components in and connections were made between the resistors and the LED's.


04-11

On Friday, Rik continued to work on connecting the components, as I started making the report. Rik's got more and more frustrated, as the soldering was nearly impossible (it did not attach properly and it is extremely small). At a given moments, it was obvious that the PCB was just not made properly enough to make it work.

That is when we decide to work on the report for the rest of the day. The option of ordering the PCB were still open and will probably happen as well. The report will be as short as possible, with visuals supporting the different phases of the process. There will be little text in there, which will be quite a challenge for me. A small preview:

Pictures of the bare PCB:

Laser printing and etching

01-11

The Eagle file is exported into Illustrator and the only thing Rik and myself needed to include the drillholes. Geert Langereis came with a great solution and the procedure was done in 5 minutes! Next we got on the bike to the guys of Easy Laser. One we got there, we left our files and there were some test runs to see how deep the laser needed to 'print' our files. Besides this, we discussed how to cut the PCB into a nice round shape, how we could etch the print and how to drill the holes fast. After a discussion in Vertigo, we got sent to the GTD, they are specialized in electronics and much more. We arranged a drill in which we could drill the 2500 holes ourselves. This would probably even be faster than drilling the holes in a machine. As a last, we visited Brigatti to buy buy sodium as an etching substance and retrieved the PCB from Easy Laser. The result be on the blog as soon as I have received the pictures.

02-11

This morning we had planned to etch and we did (only it also took us the afternoon:P), Rik arranged a 'zuurkast' and a bowl to etch the PCB, which was great, as we did not have to worry about toxins. The guys there were very helpful and helped us out a lot. At first, the sodium solution did not bite of the copper at all. Then one of the scientists proposed to use fuming nitric acid. At the moment we put it on there, we found out that there was a layer on the copper, which is why the sodium was not able to react. We polished the entire pcb with nitric acid until we saw the 'real' copper, which was much shinier than the copper before. After half an hour in the sodium solution, we had a 'bare PCB'. We polished the left-overs of with nitric acid. When we washed of the paint with thinner, we saw that a lot of tracks had been broken by the nitric acid, which means that the PCB is 'broken'. This was a big bummer... What we do next depends on the damage of the tracks, which we will also discuss with Geert Langereis 

SDL activity: Full Power

As I mentioned before I am working on an LED-clock with Rik Bootsman. Rik performed a lot of work on the project already while I was busy with the Reporter Bootcamp, ID'11 and the DDW itself. He already made a large chunk of the PCB in Eagle. The only thing I had to do was connecting the datapins and latchpins last Sunday. We worked on the PCB as well as the DCF77 (which was going to receive the time). Unfortunately we could not get the latter working. This is why we came up with a new solution; making a button attached to the Arduino which would reset the time to a default time. This looks like a 'simple' alternative, but we will discuss it with Geert of the e-lab probably before we continue with it.

As Rik finished the PCB on Sunday, Monday was the day to double-check our PCB en look for the options to laserprint it at the university. The laserprinter however, did not agree. It broke last week.. Chet however made a quick phone call to the guys of Easy Laser and they could help us the next day! So on Tuesday it was going to be laserday.It also took us quite some time to export the files properly in illustrator (to and .eps file) with the drill holes in it as well. This would make the drilling of the holes easier, because the drill will 'lead itself into the drillhole' so to speak. Serge Offermans showed us how to do this in a short time, but this way did not include the holes. As a last thing, we made the ISD-chip in Eagle as well, to use a test for the laserprinter.

Next post will be about the printing itself and how we arranged a good place to etch and drill

Plannings and SDL weeks

3-10

Today I made not one, but two plannings! They were initially requested by Sam, but very useful in these upcoming weeks. Especially with the midterm exhibition coming up next week. During my SDL-weeks, I want to read a book/ watch a documentary on the design/art-history. It is something I do not know a lot about and I think will be very useful in terms of communicating about a certain feeling or look. I think it will also help me to understand how society's changes influence design and can really change the way people look at things.

I am currently starting a project with Rik Bootsman. We are creating a clock which shows the time by a variation in the brightness/colour of (a lot of) RGB LED's). During the SDL weeks, we want to build/program it. We have already created a set-up; explored shift-registers and looked at the different components. Next step: ordering and creating the layour of the PCB. Down here is a video in which the result of the shift-register fiddling is seen. I especially like the 'wide rainbow' in which the colours gradually change.

During the SDL-weeks, there is a lot of time to see interesting and new products, people and visions. This weeks is also a big week, as it is my first time on a big exhibition with my project. I hope to impress a lot of people and show them my capabilities as a designer.