When: 26 March 2019, 3.30pm
Members present: All
After a few weeks of online discussion and research, our team had brainstormed a number of ideas for what we could do for our Making & Tinkering project. These included building a live 3D bioprinter, specific GPS tagging, solar-powered and -generated ink printer, solar-powered charging ports, smart self-watering system for household plants, and travel-sized test kits for the health-conscious to instantly and easily measure sodium and sugar levels in their meals. After further consideration, we narrowed our idea scope down to being 3D printing-related due to personal interest and perceived feasibility.
After Quantum Physics lecture on 26 March, our team approached Dr Ho to discuss our ideas.
Right off the bat, we were encouraged to turn away from bioprinting due to the exorbitant costs involved. It was one of the ideas that we were pretty keen about. 🙁 However, Dr Ho said we had the right idea about changing the extruded material from plastic to something else; we just had to think about other alternatives.
One of which was food, such as 3D chocolate printing, or 3D cake decoration. The high precision of 3D printers could be taken advantaged of to print out beautiful intricate designs on pastries! We would have to learn how to programme Arduino to control the x and y directions of the printing movement, as well as the extrusion of material, which in this case, would be cream, batter, and other pastry-related ingredients. Another more complex alternative was the prospect of printing in other industrial materials such as nylon and even resins. It would be particularly ground-breaking (and no doubt difficult) if we could figure out how to print transparent materials.
If we weren’t keen on printing, Dr Ho also suggested we could think of projects that tie in more succinctly with our individual home faculties too, which in my case would be a project to solve some kind of environmental issue.
Needless to say, we were slightly overwhelmed with all of these new ideas. It was decided that we would meet Dr Ho again after further discussions and confirmation on what project we would like to do. Not to worry, we still have time before the summer holidays after all!