Beginning the Design Process

I was out last thursday because I was getting my wisdom teeth out (all 4). So please don't murder my grade for missing the thursday blog


Anyways, today I worked on the 3d design of what will be a prototype for a "biomimetic silk spinner." I used a 3d designing app to create a basic form of what the "spinneret" end would look like.

I had to spend a lot of today learning how to use the program, and this is only the beginning. I still need to modify the interior and shape.  Here's what I managed to get done today:

You can see in the top screenshot the entire thing. It's about 4cm in diameter. The aperture of the spinneret is however, much smaller. In the second image, you can see a tiny blue dot that is actually a tube that runs the length of the cylinder. It's about 60X10⁻⁶ m in diameter - twice as large as I need it to be. (I just realized I made the radius 30μm instead of the diameter. Crap) 

I'll be working on this every so often so that I can have a printed prototype to present in May. 

What I need to make sure is that I can construct each piece in a way that I can assemble them. This is the fun part of my project!

- Noah