Tri State Area

I finished making country outline ornaments for my mom. Each ornament is a country she has visited. I found outlines of the country on Google Images and formatted them for the laser cutter, adding a circular cut out at the top. That took a long time, as the countries all have messy borders. Finally, I cut them out on birch wood and tied a piece of red ribbon through the circle.

For this quarter I spent most of the time working on a laser engraving of the Old Course at St. Andrews Golf Links in Scotland. This is one of the most famous courses in golf and it was the first golf course ever made. I played it in October of 2021 and I decided to make something to commemorate that. The main goal with the laser was to capture the detail as the old course has 112 sand bunkers and also to capture the contours of the fairways and greens. The laser is the perfect tool for this and it is really cool to see the detail engraved so cleanly on a piece of wood. Below are the two pieces I made with the engraving on them.

This program was started in my math class but was quickly transferred to the programming elective that I am in. In the elective, I was able to not only complete the programming but also test different theories by running the code (this can be seen below my print statements with a “#” to symbolize notes without affecting the code). After the initial outline was taught, I had free reign to finish and organize the code how I pleased.

This type of programming is object-oriented. For this reason, I was able to create a class that had multiple functions to solve basic quadratic math. Since all the functions are within a class, in future cases, all one has to do is “call” the class and will then have access to the functions. An example of calling a class is demonstrated at the top of my second file where I called the “ProgrammingElective class” that I had just created. This made it possible for me to print direct functions without having to rewrite all of the code.

The way that I tested each function was by creating an additional file that held all the “print” statements so that I could clearly decipher which function I was calling and what exactly it was calculating without having to read in between code.

The first sheet of code is the class itself.

from vpython import*

class quadratic:
    def __init__(self, a, b, c):
        self.a = a
        self.b = b
        self.c = c

    def zeros(self):
        d = (self.b**2)-4*self.a*self.c
        if d >0:
            z1 = (-self.b + d**0.5)/2*self.a
            z2 = z2 = (-self.b - d**0.5)/2*self.a
        else:
            z1 = None
            z2 = None
        return (z1, z2)

    def min0max(self):
        x = -self.b/(2*self.a)
        y = self.a*(x**2) + self.b*x + self.c
        return (x,y)

    def min0maxidentity(self):
        if self.a < 0:
            return ("minimum")
        else:
            return ("maximum")

    def slope(self, x):
        y = 2*self.a*x + self.b
        return y

    def y(self, x):
        y = self.a*(x)**2 + self.b*x + self.c
        return y

    def corddistance(self, x1, x2):
        y1 = self.y(x1)
        y2 = self.y(x2)
        cd = distance(x1, y1, x2, y2)
        return cd

    def linedistance(self, x1, x2, x3, x4, x5):
        cd1 = self.corddistance(x1, x2)
        cd2 = self.corddistance(x2, x3)
        cd3 = self.corddistance(x3, x4)
        cd4 = self.corddistance(x4, x5)
        ld = cd1 + cd2 + cd3 + cd4
        return ld

    def linedistance2(self, x1, x2, dx):
        ldt = 0
        for i in arange(x1, x2, dx):
            x1 = i
            x2 = i + dx
            ld2 = self.corddistance(x1, x2)
            ldt = ld2 + ldt
        return ldt

    def slopecord(self, x1, x2):
        y1 = self.y(x1)
        y2 = self.y(x2)
        sc = (y2-y1)/(x2-x1)
        return sc

def distance(x1, y1, x2, y2):
    y = ((x2-x1)**2 + (y2-y1)**2)**0.5
    return y

This next sheet contains the print statements as well as the notes.

from ProgrammingElective import*
from vpython import*

q = quadratic(1, -2, -3)

print("zeros of equation =", q.zeros())

print("min and max of equation =", q.min0max())

print("min or max identity =", q.min0maxidentity())
#used calculas to make quation for function
print("slope of equation =", q.slope(4))

print("distance between points =", q.corddistance(-2,3))

print("line length of curve =", q.linedistance(-2, -1, 0, 1, 2))

print("total length =", q.linedistance2(-2, 2, .00001))
#did not use calculas
print("slope of cord =", q.slopecord(3.999, 4))
#the following are results for the "q.linedistance" function
#11.089724298507356 - 1 (dx)
#11.224464159058982 - 0.1 (dx)
#11.226015942633229 - 0.01 (dx)
#11.226031459417593 - 0.001 (dx)
#11.226031614584913 - 0.0001 (dx)
#11.226031616156195 - 0.00001 (dx)

#the following are results for the "q.slopecord" function
#3 (x) - 5
#3.5 (x) - 5.5
#3.75 (x) - 5.75
#3.9 (x) - 5.900000000000002
#3.99 (x) - 5.990000000000023
#3.999 (x) - 5.999000000000748

In the maker-space interim I wanted to laser a yugioh card. First I got a image off the internet and put a hairline line around the image so the laser would cut it out. Then when it was done cutting out it was very dark and the image was blurry. So I asked Doctor Urbano if there was a way I could make it better. First I changed the image from colored to black and white. Then I adjusted the brightness and the intensity to make it lighter and turn out better. Then I printed it out. I learned that if you want something to turn out better on the laser making it lighter will help with making it better.

2nd

I am currently creating a display that can hold all the scorecards from the golf courses that I either visit or are significant to me. I was thinking of some cooler things that I could do with the display and I settled on making the outlines of some of the courses to laser engrave into the display. I am not very far into this project but I think it has potential to look really good. Here is a picture of what I have so far in my attempt to trace The Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland:

I revisited an old project during the first quarter. I spent some time cleaning the carburetor. I was inspired to restart this project because I had seen a video on carburetors and had had a better understanding on how they are manufactured and how they work. Here is a link to the video I watched that got me working on this project again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVfvRhWbj8&t=839s. In the end I was able to take apart the carburetor and I was able to determine with virtual certainty that this carburetor is not the problem with the Vespa. Here are some pictures of the carburetor.

I have been sharpening my skills on the vinyl cutter. I have made a few stickers but here are the scraps of the ones I have made. It takes some time to get the design to work and when it does, the machine desires to not want to connect to the computer. I have to reset the computer and figure out a solution to my problem. These are a few of the leftover scraps.

I didn’t add many things to the table this semester, because I have been planning things out before I add them to the table. For the past 2 years I didn’t plan out anything so I spent a lot of time this semester fixing the past mistakes. For the next semester I am going make the goals for the table. I am going to use PVC pipe to make a tunnel for the ball to roll into and have the ball loop around under the ball drop area. All of the pipe will be covered up by wood and will look very nice.

One of my many projects going on right now is a beach serving tray. Blas and I are doing this project together but we are each doing one. The plan is to make this so that we can practice for an epoxy beach table we might be doing in the future depending on how well this project goes and make Christmas presents at the same time. So far I have cut and sanded the wood so that I can put the blue epoxy in the sanded section. I have also made a mold around the wood so that the epoxy will not leak throw. The next step is to pour the blue epoxy into the sanded section. Then I will put clear epoxy and white to make waves.