My name is Jai Bahri, and I'm a second-year studying physics at Harvard College. Coming into this course, I am starting from scratch in virtually every topic we will cover. Reflecting both my experience and my desire to build complex products with electronic components, I'm hoping to design weekly projects and a final project that each reflect my budding familiarity with the material and tools. Simply put, my goal for the class is to improve week-over-week. In that spirit, continue on to view how I am doing so far.
Having no clue how programming software engenders robots to move and perform actions in the real world, other than some vague notion of circuitry, I hope to create a final project that interlinks a physical item and simple software. This kind of project would help me to build skills in every subject area of the course. Therefore, the initial stage of my idea is a sort of walkie talkie, allowing people to communicate from a range that would be auditorily impossible normally. Please find below the initial sketches of my walkie talkie set from different views.
So far, I have spent the week experimenting with different CAD software. I first tried FreeCAD, but, despite the innocuous name, this software was complex, and the course staff I've been in conctact with were more experienced with other platforms. In FreeCAD, I was able to create a 2D sketch--I started off simple with some rectangles and circles--but I couldn't figure out how to make it into a 3D extrusion. After much experimentation, I moved on. I am now currently working with Fusion360, with which I have been making more progress. While I am still unacquainted with most features of the software, I was at the least able to translate my walkie talkie paper drawings into a 2D sketch and extrude it into 3D. Because I don't have experience with CAD, my assignments for the week are still in progress. I am hoping that with enough practice on Fusion360, I will be able to learn how to use constraints to create a parametric sketch. I used my lab manager's tutorial on parametric design in Fusion360 to begin creating something, but what that something is I am unclear on. I have a 3D design with notches and construction lines, but I don't yet know how to translate that into a physical object with a clear use and/or purpose. Again, I hope practice and time will help with this assignment. You may have noticed that there are not currently images on my website. This is because I would also like to have some practice with image compression to be sure I am not uploading huge amounts of bytes to the server. I want to first ensure I know the correct size and format to which I must compress my images before adding them here and potentially taking up huge amounts of storage space. But I promise the images will come. The final part of this week's assignment, beyond designing a product to cut, is to use the laser and vinyl cutters to print my product. The first step here will be to have a training scheduled, which I am hoping will happen early this week. I am thinking that I will reach out to my lab manager if I don't get a scheduled training time in the next day or so. Otherwise, I also need to find a group to characterize the kern and important elements of the cutters so that when I do use them for the week's individual assignment, all settings are correct. I plan to ask on Slack if anyone would be willing to work with me, so we'll see how it goes. This week has been full of slow progress, but progress nonetheless.