Some days after the assignment was given out, we communicated through the Harvard section email list to make suggestions for a project, volunteer skills, and set a time to arrange a meeting. At out first meeting on our own (without Nadya or the Gestalt introduction) we decided to go with a 3-axis cake frosting extruder. I personally voted for the time-lapse photography mechanism, but I was happy with the group decision. Feeling less than sure of my electronics skills at this point, I volunteered to be on the end-effector design team.
Several days past, and a few designs and attempts were brought forward by the other End-Effectors. It was also at this time I decided that End Effectors was great death metal band name. After class on Wednesday the week before the assignment was due (composites lecture), Joe volunteered to his DC peristaltic pump setup to try to pump frosting. Anjue and and Dixon experimented with the pump that night, and discovered the frosting would not pump in the machine. Based off a suggestion given by Rob, they instead used the pump to fill a water balloon from a cup, while the balloon was inserted into the end of a cake frosting bag. The end results were promising, and definitely successful.