This week the sophomore class learned of the deadline for completing their Sumobots – April 13. It’s right around the corner, but there is a lot of progress happening and several bots were being tested over during the week, including bots by Alex Hickey and Nate Matarazzo, as well as another bot created by Tanzerul Azam and Aaron BenDaniel.
The Freshmen continued working on coding and circuitry with Mr. Christy this week. They are moving swiftly through the circuitry guides and learning a lot about how to control a variety of components.
Junior Anthony Cartolano is working on the candy dispenser portion of his basketball hoop project. He writes in his blog;
This week I made some good progress on my basketball project. I finished making the hook for the net in CAD, which means that my hoop is done in CAD. I went up to Metal Fab to talk about making a rim, but they said that the machine that they need to make it is broken and I should check back with them every week. For the rim holder, Mr. L said that I can plasma cut some metal and use the metal bender that we have to make it, so I’ll have to do that eventually. In the meantime, I kept working on the dispenser box in CAD. I bought a 3 liter Poland Springs water jug at Wegman’s, which I will use to hold the Jolly Ranchers. I measured and applied the dimensions to my box, which is now done. I started making a cardboard version of it with a funnel, and I’m still testing it right now with actual Jolly Ranchers. I have to make the funnel a little wider and the code doesn’t really work, so right now I’m working on fixing all that.
Read more about it here.
Senior Grace Kallberg was in the machine shop this week working on two projects. The first a lathe project called the magic tube, and the second creating a thread gauge using machine hand tools. More about these projects on her blog;
I spent this week in the machine shop. I started the week by finishing the magic tube project. On Friday last week, I faced the outside of the tube and the cap together to get a closer fit. The last steps that I needed to do were to chamfer the edges, part the tube from the stock, and sand the end down. I got this done on Monday and moved on to another machining project.
There is a new project for freshmen and sophomores to make a thread checker and Mr. L needed a tutorial video for it. Jackie and I spent the last few days creating a thread checker and filming the process. Today I will work on a project for a friend. Earlier this week, a friend in a theater program asked me to create gobos for their spotlights. Gobos are metal stencils that go over lights to make specific shapes and patterns on stage. my friend requested a few different designs, so I will make those today in Inkscape. Hopefully, I will be able to get them cut on Monday or Tuesday next week.
That’s all for this week. Can’t believe April is already upon us – the school year is moving so fast!
MVTHS Engineering 
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