MONDAY

To be honest, Monday was a very simple day. I just practiced my printing skills. As well as trying to wrap up reading the articles that I was given by my mentor. I guess the one thing that I learned was how to use and operate the 3D food printer that my mentor uses, which is the Procusini 5.0.

Other than that, my mentor just told me to keep up with my assignments because she knew that I was falling behind, and this is where I came to a realization that there was a reason why I got picked into this REU over many other candidates, and I took that for granted. And this made me overwhelmed because I don’t tend to adapt to new situations right away when it comes to different, and in my case, extreme situations. But that shouldn’t change the fact that I should keep up with my assignments. Since after all, the people who didn’t get in over me would’ve done this type of work with ease, and I just feel like I was doing a disservice to those who were rejected and actually rise to the occasion, as well as the people who oversaw the decision to pick me of all people. That was my wake up call. This alone should keep me motivated, and it did. Because I actually finished all of my assignments that my mentor gave me that day. Despite sleeping sleeping for like 4 hours or so that night.

TUESDAY

I knew that this day was going to be incredibility busy for me. Because first of all, the weekly meeting was today, where we discussed about discrimination and harassment in the workplace and talking about it with a group, and it went well. Which meant that I wasn’t shy enough to speak to random strangers at least. Then I headed to the REU meeting where we talked about ambition and drive, and they brought along an entrepreneurial coach who talked about start-ups and start-up culture in general. Then I went to straight to my lab, which is on the other wing of the George R. Brown building. And finally, progress was getting made because I was going to print some food. My mentor went to the ropes with me like she did yesterday because I was going to print a chocolate figure instead of a plastic one. And I printed out a star-like figure as my first print, and honestly the printing process for food, at least in this printer, compared to the CR-10 was way more easier to operate.



WEDNESDAY

I felt very stressed out for some reason on this day. So I didn’t do enough of what was expected of me. And this day was tiring to say the least. Because all I did, was reread some articles and turned all of my notes and takeaways from what I read, and turing them into powerpoint slides. Maybe I felt burnt out or whatever, so I walked around campus for a bit right after lunch. However, I did manage myself for the rest of the day. And tried my best that tomorrow would be the same thing.



THURSDAY

Knowing what happened to me the day before, I just tried my best to be positive and just focus on the job at hand. And it was quite similar to what I did the day before, just simply rereading some articles, and turning what I evaluated and what I learned from into powerpoint slides. I knew that the work was monotonous really, but once I actually finished it this time around. It just felt so rewarding, and it’s so cliche to say that. But that was my honest reaction after a grueling days work. And tomorrow I can finally focus on 3D printing at least.



FRIDAY

I did work on 3D printing. However, this time around it was to see if I can manipulate the G code so I can make the print go into a straight line, both vertically and horizontally right into the center of the printer bed. And to be quite frank, it wasn’t that complicated really. All I did was used the code used to make the purge line, and just copy and paste it until I found the center of the printer in my slicer, and that was it.



But the next challenge will have to be figuring out the line dimensions and the parameters so I can print different-sized lines. And I hope that I can figure that out by the end of this week.





Thanks for reading,
Brandon Espinoza.