1st Week Assignment: Project management
Individual Assignment
- Read, sign the student/instructor/lab agreements, and commit to your repos
- Work through a git tutorial
- Build a personal site in the class archive describing you and your final project
2nd Week Assignment: Computer-aided design
Individual Assignment
- Model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, ...) a possible final project
- Compress your images and videos
- Post a description with your design files on your class page
3rd Week Assignment: Computer-controlled cutting
Group Assignment
- Do your lab's safety training
- Showcase your lasercutter's focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types
Individual Assignment
- Cut something on the vinylcutter
- Parametric Construction Kit
4th Week Assignment: Electronic Production
Group Assignment
- Characterize the design rules for your in-house PCB production process
Individual Assignment
- Make and test a microcontroller development board
- Extra Credits
- personalize the board
- make it with another process
5th Week Assignment: 3D Scanning and Printing
Group Assignment
- Test the design rules for your 3D printer(s)
Individual Assignment
- Design and 3D print an object (small, few cm3, limited by printer time) that could not be made subtractively
- 3D scan an object (and optionally print it)
6th Week Assignment: Embedded programming
Group Assignment
- Browse through the data sheet for your microcontroller compare the performance and development workflows for other architectures
Individual Assignment
- Write a program for a microcontroller development board that you made, to interact (with local input &/or output devices) and communicate (with remote wired or wireless devices)
- extra credit: use different languages &/or development environments
- extra credit: connect external components to the board
7th Week Assignmen: Computer-controlled machining
Group Assignment
- Do your lab's safety training
- Test runout, alignment, fixturing, speeds, feeds, materials, and toolpaths for your machine
Individual Assignment
- Make (design+mill+assemble) something big (~meter-scale)
- Extra credit: don't use fasteners or glue
- Extra credit: include curved surfaces
8th Week Assignment: Electronics design
Group Assignment
- Use the test equipment in your lab to observe the operation of a microcontroller circuit board
- Send a PCB out to a board house
Individual Assignment
- Use an EDA tool to design and development board to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller, produce it, and test it
- extra credit: try another design workflow
- extra credit: design a case for it
- extra credit: simulate its operation
9th Week Assignment: Output devices
Group Assignment
- measure the power consumption of an output device
Individual Assignment
- Add an output device to a microcontroller board you've designed, and program it to do something
10th-11th Week Assignment: Mechanical design, machine design
Group Assignment
- Design a machine that includes mechanism+actuation+automation+application
- Build the mechanical parts and operate it manually
- Document the group project and your individual contribution
12th Week Assignment: Input devices
Group Assignment
- Probe an input device's analog levels and digital signals
Individual Assignment
- Measure something: add a sensor to a microcontroller board that you have designed and read it
13th Week Assignmen: Molding and casting
Group Assignment
- Review the safety data sheets for each of your molding and casting materials, then make and compare test casts with each of them
- Compare printing vs machining molds
Individual Assignment
- Design a mold around the process you'll be using, produce it with a smooth surface finish, and use it to cast parts
- Extra credit: use more than two mold parts
14th Week Assignment: Networking and communications
Group Assignment
- Send a message between two projects
Individual Assignment
- design, build, and connect wired or wireless node(s)with network or bus addresses and local input &/or output device(s)
15th Week Assignment: Interface and application programming
Group Assignment
- Compare as many tool options as possible
Individual Assignment
- Write an application that interfaces a user with an input &/or output device that you made
16th Week Assignment: Wildcard week
Individual Assignment
- Design and produce something with a digital process (incorporating computer-aided design and manufacturing) not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it.
17th Week Assignment: Applications and implications
Individual Assignment
Propose a final project masterpiece that integrates the range of units covered, answering:
- What will it do?
- Who's done what beforehand?
- What will you design?
- What materials and components will be used?
- Where will come from?
- How much will they cost?
- What parts and systems will be made?
- What processes will be used?
- What questions need to be answered?
- How will it be evaluated?
Your project should incorporate 2D and 3D design, additive and subtractive fabrication processes, electronics design and production, embedded microcontroller interfacing and programming, system integration and packaging. Where possible, you should make rather than buy the parts of your project Projects can be separate or joint, but need to show individual mastery of the skills, and be independently operable
18th Week Assignment: Project Development
Individual Assignment
Complete your final project tracking your progress:
- What tasks have been completed?
- What tasks remain?
- What has worked? what hasn't?
- What questions need to be resolved?
- what will happen then?
- what have yuo learned?