1 Principles and Practices

I downloaded and installed Git for Windows and did the online tutorial Try Git but things only made sense when I created a git repository on my hard drive and went through some examples from the Pro Git Book. This is an excellent reference and helped me a lot. I am impressed with Git and like the way you can do version control on a local computer without requiring a server.

I created a Git tutorial as a way to try and understand this software and as a record for future referral.

For the web pages I decided to use Bootstrap as it is easy to create responsive webpages. I downloaded the compiled and minified CSS from http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/#download. Unzipped the files to my student directory. A couple of W3Schools Bootstrap Tutorials later I was good to go.

Final Project

I intend to design and build a Stirling Engine stove fan. I've a wood burning stove and thought about building a thermoelectric driven fan that sits on top of the stove and blows the warm air around the room. However I noticed that some fans were driven by the Stirling Engine which is a purely mechanical device that uses temperature difference to generate fuild (air) movement around a closed system driving pistons which in turn rotate a fan.

An initial sketch of what the stove fan might look like is shown below. It's early days so this will change as more is learnt about the mechanical and thermal processes involved and as I progress through the various Fab Lab Academy modules

Final Project Update

After speaking with my Fab Academy supervisor it was decided that the Stirling Engine stove fan would not be a suitable final project because it would not use enough of the typical Fab Lab equipment and processes. Instead I decided to build a solar kiln which will make use of the Shopbot CNC router, 3D printing and electronics hardware and software. A sketch of the new final project is shown below and the link to the final project page will give more details about it.