Bench and Umbrella Workout

January 22 our team assembled to create a workbench that could be used to assemble the bases of our lights and organize our workspace more efficiently.  Mr. Bechtel came and helped us assemble the bench.  We can now hammer, drill, and saw without touching the lab’s lab tables!  Misgana Lesbo had a eureka moment when we were discussing how to engineer the mechanical aspect of the linear actuator.  As the team described the problem she said, “Oh, you want the petals to work like an umbrella, right?”  So we decided to experiment with an umbrella that had one broken spine in its skeleton.  We removed the waterproof material and cut the excess metal skeleton off.  Our student engineer, Boris Huang, believes it will work!  It is our goal to have Edinburgh Welding help to shape the orbital pendant light as well as an arch desk light.  We are also preparing for our mid-grant technical review.