MONDAY

My first Monday as an REU student was as abrupt as I expected it to be. At first, I only read articles about different types of 3D printers and technologies. In particular, DIW (Direct Ink Writing) printing technology, and FFF/FDM (Fused Filament Fabrication/Fused Deposition Modeling) printing. Then, out of nowhere my mentor told me to meet up with her alongside my PI to talk about what the project was going to be exactly. I mean, I knew since last Friday that I was going to retrofit a 3D printer and converting it into a 3D food printer, but now I knew what type of 3D printer I was going to work with. Which was a CR-10S Pro V2 by Creality.

 

So by tomorrow I was actually going to be hands-on in the lab instead of being alone in a separate room, reading and “understanding” articles that my mentor assigned to me. And as if things weren’t chaotic enough, well at least for me. I get overwhelmed easily. My mom told me that she wasn’t going to pick me up from campus because she fell ill, thankfully my mentor was very understanding about my situation and I left via Uber an hour and a half earlier than expected. But to make up for lost time, or at least an hour and a half of it, I just read the remaining articles that I needed to read to compensate the 8 hour workday requirement.

TUESDAY

This is where the fun happens. This is where I try to 3D print something for the first time. But before that, I attended the weekly meeting at Brockman Hall, where we discussed essentially about icebreakers that us, REU students, can implement in our environment in the lab as a way to deal with certain issues that can use to defend ourselves, and just do our job basically. After that, the R-STEM REU students headed to the mechanical engineering building to discuss about how to deal with a research paper, and what are they way to read and analyze it properly. Then when it was all set and done, I and along with others from the SURF program were being taught on how to use the 3D printer. The same printer that Neethu and I are going to retrofit. The only downside of that day was that I didn’t get to print anything at all to begin with. Until tomorrow…

WEDNESDAY

The day was the day. The day I was finally going to 3D print something. But first, I had to wrap some PowerPoints about the articles that I read about the different types of printing, those being DIW and FFF/FDM printing of course. After that, finally after all this time, I will print something from the 3D printer that were given to us before it gets retrofitted. And the first thing I wanted to print was hook to put in lab coat when all the fun stuff begins.

 

Then I had an ambition in mind, and that was making a lego person. And that is where Operation: Lego Man begins. I did the head first to its full scale to get my idea across. It looks nice, but it wasn’t ideal. So I tried to minimized it to a par to get it to the size that I wanted (or at least to realistic to that of an actual lego person. Because it was either that, or print an airless basketball. But first of all, it was too big for to print it out completely to its fullest scale, second it would’ve taken at least 2 and a half days to print it out to at least if minimize it to scale of that of what the printer required, and lastly I mentioned basketball, so… Celtics in six. I’m just saying.). After the head was finished, I also did the torso. And that was a wrap, it ended quite quickly than what I expected to sadly.

THURSDAY

The first full day of Operation: Lego Man was about to begin. But first, I had to attend on how to do a journal presentation seminar of sorts. It was good, since I always have issues when it came to public speaking, so it was a good resource for me before the showcase starts. It seemed all good until now… However, the printer had major issues when I came in to the lab. It took around 4 hours to fix it until me and my lab mates realized that that the extruder nozzle was clogged, so we just basically had to replace it. So I didn’t have enough to time build it piece by piece, and when I tried to print another lego head, but it was warped to the point that the face itself looked like it had some massive scars.

 

 

And also, I was supposed to work with the 3D food printer with my mentor as well. But she told me that it had some major troubleshooting problems, and it will fixed hopefully around next week or so. But all-in-all, Project: Lego Man will live to see another day.

FRIDAY

Today I bring you with some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the food 3D printer is fixed, which means that I can start practicing on Monday on how to print food, in this case how to print chocolate. The bad news is that Operation: Lego Man was a failure, all I had was the torso and the head and that is it.

 

 

Also, I had my third meeting between my PI before he went on a trip to the east coast, as well as with my mentor. And we discussed on what to do about my project. Overall, I was anxious because I knew what they were talking about, but when it came to the PI when he asked me some questions, I got lost in translation every time I answered. I was never the best explainer at all to begin with. But I did just enough to defend myself, and just well enough to get my point across to him. It wasn’t so bad to be honest, at least my mentor wasn’t angry with me at least. And when the day almost came to an end, I partook in another weekly lab meeting where I tried my best to get involved until the rest of my REU members headed to the Grand Hall to play some trivia, and I just left to go home taking some snacks with me that they offered there.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon Espinoza.