B’s APSC 150 Test for January
Welcome to UBC! Here is info about the “Prototpying” talk given to APSC 150 students in September 2012.
Download the talk here: APSC 150 – pototyping – 2012Sept – v5 (pdf, ~4Mb)
0. For further info on any of the prototyping info below
Contact Jon Nakane, Lab Director for Engineering Physics Project Lab.
Note that the 1st year “prototyping” survey will be given out through Vista/Connect, and given in conjunction with an EWB survey that you are going to do for the course as well. It should be released sometime before the Module 1 quiz.
1. Prototyping tools
- More about the EngPhys Program
- ENPH 253 – intro to prototyping course for 2nd year Engineering Physics students.
- The 2012 competiton – Build-Bots
- Our Boot-Camp hand tool exercise to build your own tape-following robot.
- Videos of the Engineering Physics prototyping equipment in action – waterjet cutter, laser cutter, and 3D printer.
- Other departments with comparable prototyping facilities:
- Electrical Engineering has a waterjet cutter and three 3D Objet machines. All described here
- Mechanical Engineering has a waterjet cutter and 2-3 UP 3D printers, and access to their student machine shop as well.
- The only other laser cutter on campus? Run by the School of Architecture. They also have a very nice 3-axis CNC router, it takes 4footx8foot sheets of material!
- Want to manufacture your drawing? You can draw up items in any CAD drawing software (like Google Sketchup or SolidWorks or Autocad ) and submit to a 3D company like Shapeways or Ponoko – get your part in less than a week.
- You can prototype in software as well – graphical tools like processing.org make visual simulations easy to run (samples at the Phys350 – classical mechanics website)
- We often prototype electronics using the Arduino micrcontroller boards. Very popular and easy to use (and our own TINAH boards are very closely related to them) – and can be built up into surprisingly powerful tools.
2. A Few Undergrad Projects and Sponsors
- You can see the full list of ~80 posted projects for this year posted here: AVAILABLE PROJECTS – 2012 / 2013
- Autonomous Remote Control Kite in action.
- Titanoboa vs. Mondo Spider (also see the full-length Titanoboa) These are projects that have been initiated by a few alums from the Engphys program, and have been the source of projects for both Engphys and Mechanical Engineering. A lot of valuable engineering skills can be learned working on these kinds of products.
- A great way to work with profs on campus from a bunch of different departments:
- from Physics: Kirk Madison, David Jones, Carl Michal, Chris Waltham ,Hirohisa Tanaka,
- from Electrical Engineering: Konrad Walus, Lukas Chrostowski, Karen Cheung, Gregor Miller, Tim Salcudean,
- from Mech: Gary Schajer, , Murray Hodgson, James Olson,
- Zaber Technologies – sponsored a number of projects in the past, and most of the founders came from Engineering Physics
3. How things work – Ideas and Components
These are a few places you can pick up some useful information about how things work, and to see what parts go into different objects.
- iFixIt Teardowns – A particularly instructive website for learing about what key elements are in modern electronics (and I mean very modern – they had tear-downs of most iPhones within hours of going on sale. The Iphone 5 is now done, as of the first day of sales. The tear-down of the Pleo dinosaur is particularly fun.
- Instructables has a nice collection of project descriptions and how you can build your own devices.
- McMaster-Carr – they sell just about every mechancial device and component imaginable.
- Sparkfun – electronics projects and parts for prototyping. Their forums are incredibly helpful. Their founder, Nathan Seidle, is super-nice, too.
- Newark and Digikey – two electronics vendors that sell everything.
- Download the PDF “Super-Quick Intro to Electronics” to learn about electronics components.
End.