This week, I was able to go to the FabLab (unlike last week when I was sick!) and I worked on the embroidery machines.

My neighbor has a pretty fancy embroidery machine that has all sorts of different patterns and designs you can download onto it and make the machine sew. I never thought of designing my own embroidery pattern before this class because the machine always had ones pre-made for me!

The software we used worked much like Illustrator. You could select areas of an image, change text, and simulate what it would look like before it was embroidered. We used Brother branded machines and accompanying software. My machine got its thread caught part-way through my design, so I had a bit of a mishap the has resulted in my design not looking like it was originally intended to. I wanted to make a mountain range – the points were relatively easy to draw and layer by hand in the software. Images are below:

This first image is of the completed design. It is three layered mountains with a moon in the corner. 

This is me pointing to the areas where you can see that the machine got caught and offset my design. I had to use a thread ripper to fix it.

This is the back of my design. I used a white thread on the bobbin, so that’s why the outlines on the front of my design and the back is all white. 

Next week, we will add LEDs behind our fabric and attach it to our boxes. Since I wasn’t in the lab the first week, I think the lab techs are going to make me a plain box to use.

My group decided on our final project idea – we will be creating a “counter”, likely using infrared technology, that will count the number of people entering and leaving an establishment. Currently, only mass retail stores use them, and they can be quite expensive. If we can create a low-cost version, it can be deployed to businesses across town and tracked in an app all consumers can use to monitor when the best time to go to a restaurant, store, or other business is. Additionally, our counter can be used in a more social entrepreneurial manner – we could use it at homeless shelters or emergency waiting rooms to track capacity levels.

Here are some links that we’ll use to make our own counter:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Infrared-based-digital-object-counter-DIY-kit/

How to make a digital object counter using, infrared sensor, CD4026 and seven segment display

Because I will be working in the aerospace industry after graduation, I wanted to know if laser cutting was common in commercial plane production. It seems that, in the past, it has been used to cut the aluminum side-plates that make up the fuselage of the plane. However, I haven’t found any articles on how the increased use of carbon fiber (take the Boeing 787, for example) affects old cutting techniques. I expect laser-cutting is still used as it can reduce the jagged edges you get when you cut carbon fiber.