This week in class we had the pleasure of hearing from an employee who works for Shapeways. I had always wanted to learn more about how these 3D printing factories work so this presentation was really interesting for me. Right away I thought it was cool that she took us on a quick tour of the production area and I was surprised by how industrial their facilities look. Listening to the employee describe all of the different types of prints that they do and the different types of people and organizations that they service was very enlightening to hear. It seems like 3D printing technology is well on its way to becoming the preferred method of mass production for a lot of industries and that the technology will likely further revolutionize the manufacturing industry. After seeing all that Shapeways does, I can expect 3D printing manufacturing services like Shapeways to will be the norm in the distant future.

After the guest lecture, we were given time to work on our projects and begin prototyping.  For us that meant getting our design finalized. One of the key takeaways that I took from the readings this week was from the Edison nation article that talked about prototyping. It says that one of the best ways to start prototyping is to simply grab a pen and some paper and draw it out and that’s exactly what my group did. We spent about an hour just drawing out potential designs and seeing what we liked and disliked about them. Drawing multiple prototypes really helped us figure out our overall design and what we ended up with looks a bit different from our original concept. I am sure as we continue to prototype our design and begin to model it in CAD, it will change many times over. Additionally, I have spent a lot of time this week figuring out how to add sensors to our vertical farm in order for it to give the user information about the plants being grown. So far, I have changed my original idea to include sensors that, based off of my research, will better detect if a plant needs to be watered or not and will be creating a prototype of the electronics soon to see how everything will work put together. Overall it was a productive week and I am excited to see the progress of all of the projects in our class.

https://uofi.box.com/s/ga7h6767164gvzs8nipgkj4m88on15mb

(Picture of our design on paper)