Week 2: April 7, 2016

Group HamPipe returned to the scene of their design lab planning. The weather was mild, though slightly overcast, and the group was ready for some intense engineering. After working all week on both blog and proposal, everyone was well-versed in the various designs and inner-workings of heat pipes. The trio decided to take on the divide and conquer method. Karen worked on finding somewhere to buy methanol for testing, since it was the only material the group did not already know where they could purchase. Meanwhile, Ben set to work using Autodesk's Fusion 360 to make a 3-D model of the group's design for the superior heat pipe. Noelle, on the other hand, could be found typing away enthusiastically on the group's blog, making certain that anyone curious would be well-informed on the group's activities, as well as adding to the various tabs included in the blog. One aspect of this was sorting through the group's research, grouping it, and generating citations to add to the resources page. During discussion of the design of the heat pipe, the group realized that there would be an issue of conductivity between the fins (planned to be made of stainless steel mesh) and the copper tubing, so they switched their design to include fins made of thin copper plating instead.
Ben experienced a few setbacks on the Fusion 360 modeling, but he generally made very useful progress and was optimistic about the outcome of his work. Once Karen was finished shopping for flammable liquids, she created a schedule for the group's activities over the entire 10 week period. Set upon their tasks, team HamPipe worked diligently through the two hour time period, and vowed to stay in touch during the coming week so that upcoming tasks would not pile-up and threaten to overwhelm them.

 

Figure 2: The beginning of the Fusion 360 model of the HamPipe