May 14th was a huge day for S.P.A.M. as we agreed to present our group’s mobile sustainable 3D printing system at two prestigious events for UCI! Both events, held at locations roughly 6 miles apart, were TedxUCIrvine (located at Segerstrom Center for the Arts) and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) Symposium (located on campus at UCI). While our presentation at UROP was planned months in advance, our involvement with TedxUCI was scheduled and confirmed about a month prior to the event.
0512161431cWith only one version of our cart created, we were left with a stressful, but fortunate conundrum. At first we were contemplating how we’d be able to transport the system to both events in a timely, safely manner, but inevitably decided it would not be ideal since it was too much of a risk to test this level of mobility so quickly. One of our group members proposed a brilliant resolution of doing a livestream presentation at UROP of the system running at TedxUCI, but, as fate had it, our group was located outside of Segerstrom where connection to Wi-fi and multiple outlets was not possible with our last minute addition to the roster. This then led to the final iteration of our plan which was to simply split our group and have 3 people present a powerpoint at UROP while the other 3 maintained and promoted S.P.A.M. at TedxUCI.
IMG_4750Our preparation on the big day began at 9 A.M. as our group grabbed all the tools we needed and the system so we could transport everything with the help of a U-Haul (kindly provided by TedxUCI) and various of our members’ vehicles. After arriving at Segerstrom with all parts and members in tow, we set up the system, had it all running, and promoted our project and group to various people who took interest in our quirky, industrial-like 3D printing system. About 2 to 3 hours into our running system, our lovely members Amihan, Eunji, and Aldrin set off to present an out-of-this-world S.P.A.M. slideshow at UROP while William, Aaron, and I stayed behind to further maintain the cart and promote S.P.A.M. While I’d like to say that everything went without a hitch at both events, problems still managed to occur in unexpected ways.
MDP Presentation
Fabulous UROP presentation created by Eunji and Amihan! S.P.A.M. logo created by Tucker Moody
With UROP, our only tiny hitch was that attendance to our presentation wasn’t as high as we hoped it would be. However, Amihan, Aldrin, and Eunji graciously powered through and delivered a wonderful, informative presentation regarding our group and the projects we’ve accomplished in the past year to those in attendance. They expertly answered any questions the audience had and eventually returned to TedxUCI to continue helping with the rest of the group.
As for TedxUCI, however, two major problems occurred. The first unexpected glitch started with a washer jamming the grinding portion of our extruder, leaving that part of our system inoperable for the rest of the day. This problem has never occurred before and there were no obvious buttons that would reverse the polarity to get it unstuck, thus forcing us to save that problem for later back at our Speculative Prototyping Lab. The second major problem occurred in the afternoon portion of the event. While it would’ve been ideal to learn another way, our set up of the cart outside that day wisely taught us one thing we should have, but never really accounted for when running our system—weather. The staff at TedxUCI kindly invited us remaining members to watch the inspiring Tedx talks so we naturally accepted as we’ve seen our system run continuously on battery power for a few hours without much, if any, maintenance. Little did we realize that with the windy weather that was going on outside before and during the talk, our system was using up a lot more battery life than expected due to the 3D printer constantly needing to draw a lot of power to maintain a steady, high heating temperature that is necessary for printing plastic filament. This led to a very shocking return of our system shut off and our batteries drained to a low 10% battery life.
At this point, nothing in our system was able to work/turn on except our bikes ability to recharge the batteries (which we assuredly spent a majority of our time there doing). We could have packed up and called it quits, but the largest crowd had not showed up yet and we were determined to stay. While we didn’t have the system itself running, we had no trouble at all explaining our system to roving attendees who were more than interested in learning what our group and system is about. Our system may not have functioned the way we wanted it to, but our priority goal was achieved: to promote S.P.A.M. and help the general population understand what it is we’re trying to achieve with our system!
IMG_4748 Despite the hair-pulling stress these unexpected hiccups caused, we chose to see this day as positive rather than negative. Unpredictable variables will always occur and the best thing you can do is take them as they come and handle them with a positive attitude in mind so you have no choice but to move forward with your head held high. Fast forward to 2 weeks later today, everything on our system is running again and we’re nearly ready to present our project again—this time at the Beall Center for Art + Technology! While I’m sure there will still be unexpected curve balls thrown our way, I’m confident that our team will be more than ready to overcome and learn from them.