IC JE

Today in class we are to talk about how we've been researching, or our method. Personally I tend to Google the problem initially, and then if the answer isn't really apparent, I'll call the store of the product I was looking for, or I'll ask a tech teacher at school or my mentor.

In terms of macro research I really haven't been actively, on my own time, looking up engineering facts or golf club making information. I have however, been learning a lot more about  physics in my physics class, and design and engineering techniques in EDD, both classes taking up a good amount of time.

For micro research I've spent time looking at all the little things about my project, mainly like I said in my last post things like coolant, or drill bit size, type of aluminum alloy, etc.

For kinds of research I haven't been doing, I haven't really self reflected enough since I haven't had much free time to do anything other than focus on my project, so I've forgotten about analyzing my past problems and what I've learned from past mistakes.

Update 3/26

I've been working mainly in Edgecam for the last week or so whenever I can find free time in school to use the tech computers, since Edgecam costs upwards of $400 to license for a year. Most of the time I've been simply trying to figure out how to use it again, since I forgot how to use most of the features on it. After a couple of tries and a youtube tutorial video, I figured out how to click the manufacturing button on the toolbar to get myself started with milling operations. I did some really basic stuff with profiling the putter and that sort of thing. I've actually got some pictures to show too!

You can somewhat see the outline of the putter underneath all of the purple lines, but that's not really the point of this post to show the putter head. The purple lines are basically the path the mill head is supposed to follow in order to cut the main outline of the head. Each cut has to be shallow or else the risk of the mill head breaking or overheating becomes significantly higher, since it is metal cutting metal.

This would be what it looks like after the 3 profiling operations I implemented; each operation cut a different tier of the back of the putter. The reason it's not completely cut out of the metal, or the reason the metal around the head isn't all gone, is because 1) the surrounding metal is essentially scrap metal and there's no need to cut more than I need to, and 2) I'm still awful at using this program. However, being terrible at this and improperly using the profiling operation opened b=my eyes; the putter with the thicker back and curved cut-out looks much better than the original head, and so I've updated the original head to look more like it.

Also, the process of cutting this made me think about how exactly I'm going to mill the head, so I looked it up and found that cutting aluminum involves a lot of coolant; even more if the aluminum alloy has harder metals in it. And that made me look for different types of coolant to buy, since I don't know if the school 1) has enough coolant or 2) would be willing to let me use their coolant. The most recommended type of coolant that I found was Qualichem Q-cool 361 ($30/gal). I then couldn't find how much of it I would need, and then found even more about CNC milling aluminum WITHOUT coolant, so I'll be asking Mr. Breigle very soon about the coolant situation.

This week I'll be working more on Edgecam and my goal is to have a complete milled profile by next week.

Poem thoughts

On Monday in class we read the poem 'Two Tramps in the mud Time' by Robert Frost, and we were asked to write a blog/journal entry about what we thought about it and how a part of it relates to our own project. For me, it was the stanza about him chopping wood that resonated with me:

"Good blocks of oak it was I split, As large around as the chopping block; And evert piece I squarely hit Fell splinterless as a cloven rock. The blows that a life of self-control Spares to strike for the common good, That day, giving a loose my soul, I spent on the unimportant wood."

I chose this because I get the same, enjoyable mindless experience when sanding my golf shaft, because even though it's slow work I enjoy knowing that it will pay off in the end with a good looking piece of wood. There's also another stanza later on when he talks about him loving the prospect of chopping wood even more and relishes it when he is surrounded by problems; although I don't think I could ever love sanding wood, I have experienced that same situation and can relate.

I've got a funny feeling that other people in the class are going to choose the same lines, since the other stanzas are kinda abstract and I asked the people around me and they all said that same thing as me.

Update 3/19

Over the past week I've been modeling different putter head designs after learning a very important piece of information from Mr. Krywe: the tech department doesn't have a ball-mill for the CNC Mill; they only have flat-heads. This really changes how I design for this, since I can't do curved surfaces at all, and sloped surfaces will have to be a lot less steep or else I run the risk of having the metal come out looking like crap. I really liked the idea of a head that instead of having a solid back surface that sloped down or curved down from the top of the head to the bottom like this one:

I would instead have a set of "steps" on the back; the same kind of idea that farmers use in the mountains so they have flat planting surfaces. I'm sure someone has done it before, but I've never seen one like it and I wouldn't think many other people would've seen one either, since none of the current major brands like Nike, Titleist, Taylormade, etc., have made a model like it in the past 20 years and probably further back. I have been doing other variations that wouldn't require to cut a slope too steep, but so far this is my favorite.

I'll be meeting with my mentor on Wednesday and bringing my different designs to him to try and finalize a decision for the design so I can bring it into Edgecam and start making the milling process.

IC JE

So after peer-reviewing Phoebe Clark's journal for last week and writing a post about it, we did another journal entry in class for each journal we reviewed. It was basically the list out the strengths and weaknesses on the project we reviewed.

Strengths:
1. The student was very dedicated to researching the project, and had a lot of work and write-ups to show for it in her journal since her project involved a lot of it.
2. She also reached out to many different scientists and researchers in the area, including local businesses and Cornell professors.
3. She had some good pictures and charts in her journal, and even though they were few and far between, they were all very impressive and detailed.

Weaknesses:
As a precursor, Phoebe's journal and project was amazing, and only had a couple of nit-picky things.

1. The topic was really hard to understand; from what I could tell it was a college-level bio project for a high school senior
2. She said she didn't do what she intended to, but in the end almost accomplished her main goal and learned a lot more than she expected to in the end
3. Her handwriting was a little difficult to read in some places like it was rushed

WISE Project Review

I reviewed the project of a previous WISE student, Phoebe Clark, who took up the task of "expressing a malaria protein in tetrahymena". I chose this project to review mostly because there wasn't really any other projects similar to mine, and because it sounded pretty interesting.

The project itself was something really advanced and most of it was beyond my understanding, probably because I hadn't taken AP Biology. The scope of this project seemed simple enough, just doing lab work, but it involved a lot of work and to me looked like a college-level biology project because of the time and resources she put into it. She got a lot of help from local labs and Cornell professors to complete this project.

Phoebe said she didn't accomplish exactly what she set out to do (even though I can't tell what she did wrong), but she still learned a lot, and reflected well on what she did learn.

Update 3/8

The final entry of the 4 I had written up previously.

I have begun to sand down my shaft a little more now since I have decided upon a size for the tip of my shaft: .34in in diameter. I'm currently not able to sand down the actual tip, since I need to keep it square in case I have to clamp it down again, but I have been sanding the middle according to how much the shaft would taper up from .34 at the bottom. It's a very slow process, since it's always better to have too much wood than too little and I want to be careful with how much I sand, but I should be able to finish it in a reasonable timeframe, about 3 weeks, if I work on it at the same time as designing the head.

I also started work on the second design up the putter head; this one is different in that it has eliminated much of the cavity that the first one employed. It's more dense and had less complex shapes than the first one. I want the option of having a heavier head after playing with my friend Dave's old putter for a round because I forgot my putter at home, and I found that I liked a heavier head because it has a better pendulum motion and feel in my hands, unlike my current putter which I have to swing harder, and therefore less accurately, to hit it.

Update 3/5

The third entry of the 4 I had wrote previously. The 5th will be about the WISE project I looked at over the last 2 weeks.

Today I met with my mentor again, Dan Miller, and we mostly talked about what I had accomplished over the last week or so. We met on Monday instead of Wednesday, because it fitted our schedules better. Dan has been talking with a bunch of "golf" people in the area, mostly from Newman and Cornell, and found someone who could help me with assembling my putter when it is done. He works at Dick's Sporting Goods, so I'll also be able to ask him about the right kind of grip I want for my shaft, the different kinds of putter grips (they are a lot different from other grips since some are flat on the top), and I think most importantly, how narrow the shaft has to be to fit a grip on it without it. I also showed him my tentative sketches for the first head I had finished designing by then; he had a couple suggestions for it, mainly that it should have a face angle of about 2 degrees because we decided it wasn't going to have grooves and it's important to get the ball up in the air a tiny bit to get it rolling. He also suggested that I have 2 "aiming grooves" on the top of the head instead of 1, 1 on either side of the ball instead of just in the middle of it.

Update 2/29

This is the second entry I've wrote up but not be able to publish it.

I've been working more on the CAD model the last couple of days. It's really been a challenge of figuring out the ratio of toe to heel weight, because the head has to balance out the weight of the shaft&grip attached to it. I've found from weighing and measuring all the putters at my house that mallet putters generally are more symmetrical than blade putters because the heads are so much larger and therefore have more weight to move around to offset the light weight of the shaft. The ratio of the blade putters, however, is about 1.3:1 in terms of weight, and it's been really quite challenging to try and model the head to keep that ratio as close as possible.

Edit: after doing a bit more researching, I realized that my wooden shaft is actually about twice as heavy as most metal shafts, so the ratio is going to be closer to 1.2:1.

Update 2/25

So after being locked out of my google account for about 2 weeks for no good reason at all, I'm finally able to post my entries again. I've been keeping track of them in a notebook, so there'll be about 4-5 straight posts this morning. This one is from 2/25, so it was a couple days after I had started work on my shaft.

I began work on doing a CAD drawing of my putter head after I had finalized 2 different designs of my putter. I plan on doing both all the way through to the end, and choose the easier and simpler one to mill, which comes down to how complex the shapes are and if I can mill the top of the head with as few realignments at all; my goal for that is none at all. I started out with how I would start to cut the head from the beginning, mostly having a big block and cutting out simpler shapes out of it.

So far I have figured out the size of the block I want to start with; 2x4x4, which I believe I can get from some type of metal store. It's this size because I want to have the head 4 in long, from heel to toe, and have the shaft insert raised up about 2 inches from the head so that I can bend it slightly so that to shaft is inserted at an appropriate angle.