Week 3

Progress

This week we decided to liven up our blog by changing the template to something more aesthetically pleasing. Clicking through a blog shouldn't be a mundane experience, but an enjoyable one. During the lecture, we finished writing our project proposal and submitted it online via BBlearn. Most of the equipment we need to start building should be ready by Week 4. Also, we were given a tour around the back room of the innovation studio where the machine tools are located. We look forward to at least one of our team members getting the Tier 2 certification and learning how to use the tools from the studio personnel available.

Decisions

We purchased most of the equipment we'll be using to build the heat pipe and brought it to lab during Week 3; they were pretty cheap and easy to find. For Week 4, we are ready to begin the building phase. The testing, analysis, and adjustment cycle will continue over the next couple of weeks that follow. Here is a picture of what we bought:

Figure 1: The materials we gathered for the heat pipe.

We bought 2 samples of the 1/2-inch-diameter copper pipe as the base; we plan to use the extra copper pipe in case something goes wrong with the first build. We bought copper wire mesh as our choice of wick for that it works best for our design as well as some copper caps and copper screw adapters in case we wanted to make extensions.

The start of the heat pipe construction will begin in the lab during Week 4.