This week the Freshmen worked on CAD guides. They alternate each week between CAD and circuitry work. In addition to their CAD work this week, they also began making lasercut name tags for their shop locker. The process included learning about some of the hand tools in the shop as they each drilled holes in their locker in order to bolt their name tag onto the exterior. It was the first time many students had used an electric drill, hole punch, chamfer tool, and a level.
This week Junior Anthony Cartolano began construction of his basketball hoop vending machine. He wrote on his blog:
This week I made a lot of progress on my basketball project. Towards the end of last week I figured out exactly how big I needed the PVC for the pole, so I went to Home Depot to get it. I needed a 9 foot tall pipe for the main support, then a 90 degree elbow piece and 2 foot long piece to connect to the backboard. The closest thing to 9 feet that they had was 10 feet, so I got that and used the horizonal bandsaw to cut it down. I also started making the dispenser for the candy in CAD. I started off by making a box and going from there. I found a model of a servo motor on Google and used it in my design. I didn’t finish it since I was having trouble getting lines to constrain and I was going back and forth with the PVC. I made a privative cardboard version of my backboard with the same dimensions so I could see where the backboard was going to screw in, but me and Zack learned that just taping it on wasn’t going to work. Because of this, I had to design a plug that would fit into the PVC that would allow it to bolt in to the backboard. I made a smaller test version of it to make sure that the M8 screws would fit, but my files wouldn’t transfer over to the 3D printer computer so I wasn’t able to print it today. I should get the plug don’t by the end of the week, then I can start to test where I want the backboard to screw in. I also got 60 cans for the can drive from Wegman’s.
Check out more on his website here.
Senior Alex Prentiss is putting the finishing touches on his scrolling LED sign. He wrote on his blog;
This week in shop, I worked on sealing away my news display project. I worked on some finishing coding touches which included installing new fonts for the neomatrix, and refining the rate at which the database will clear itself of previous entries. Other than that, I soldered the electronics together and figured out the routing for the wiring before making the final cuts. The screen will be made of a frosted translucent acrylic and the rest of the case will be made out of wood with the possible addition of a L-bracket to make sure that the wood does not warp over time.
I am very excited to wrap up this project because that means that I get to move on to utilizing image detection for an autonomous rc-car. This project will be difficult and I don’t have much time to do it, but it will definitely be a fun learning experience and a good use for what I have been learning about tensorflow, opencv, mediapipe, etc…
See some videos of his project on his blog here.
The Sophomores are continuing on their Sumobot project. Most are working in 2 person groups to create their bot. In a few weeks time they will battle to see which bot is superior. We will be posting video and photos of those battles when the event happens.
MVTHS Engineering 
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