Welcome back everyone!
I cant believe I’m already halfway through my internship! The weeks fly by so quickly when you’re having as much fun as I am.
This week was full of fun experiences and interesting experiments!
At the start of this past week we had the opportunity to further refine a polish the foam cutter CNC machine that we, Ben, Carted and I, were able to make and begin using.
From the point we had previously reached we would only cut straight items, such as the center pieces of wings. The next challenge came in the form of trying to cut something that was tapered from the tip to the end. For instance the wingtip of a plane wing.
This came with its fair share of challenges. These challenges included the struggles from proper temperature of the wire, cutting speed, and tension of the wire. All these different facts heavily impacted the progression and reliability of our cuts. However, by the end of the week we were able to successfully cut a tapered wing segment by adding a spring to the other side of the wire to allow more tension as it cut, since the wire was pulled apart with the differing distances each side of the CNC machine had to go.
(A finished tapered wing after a LOT of troubleshooting.)
On top of that the A.R.E.N. team invited us out to help participate in a WindWall kite tail test.
This test allowed us to measure the drag and lift of several different kite tails. The data was odd and even I had a hard time looking at it.
In addition, the WindWall allowed us to obtain the data of varying speeds. For example: the WindWall has a maximum speed of 36 MPH, and we utilized a percentage system of the maximum speed for the testing. The different testing percentages were 75%, 85%, and 95%. This allowed a vast range of data to be collected.
(Above is an image of the recorded data for one of the kite tails.)
(A multi-tail ribbon in testing.)
(The WindWall we used for testing located in Tulsa.)
For fun I went for another midnight cookie run and had fun exploring the city of Stillwater! If anyone comes to visit I highly recommend stopping for food at Stilly Express Don Pibil! (The tacos are super good!)
Additional note:
Bring earplugs when you experiment with the WindWall… Its loud as heck!
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