Paul Keutelian Online

Recap: This is my final day working at the engineering library at the University of Illinois. Below is a 5 hour breakdown of my last graveyard shift. I loved working here because every day without fail something totally new would happen. Don’t believe? Read on.

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Results:

A lean this year towards swept wing design gave me a chance to quickly come up with a small sample of the extent of our foam-cutter. It’s nice to test the limits of this new hardware, I haven’t had a chance apart from my own personal tests to see the extent of the ability of this new circuitry. The team has always used a hershey-bar wing design and finally there is a chance we may do something a little fancy. To this date, I’ve taught almost 10 people on the operation of the machine so that I have more time to work on other things. So far it’s just been what they’ve needed to know, basic wing cutouts and things like that, nobody has expressed interest in any advanced cutting (washout, different airfoils at root/tip, etc.) So that’s stuff that I’ve included in the instructions.

This wing above uses a different airfoil at the root/tip and is under 50% of the maximum size of a wing we can make using the current machine. The trick for us, though, is making a small wing as flexible as possible. The maximum speed I’ve coaxed out of this machine has let me cut a wing like this in just over 3 minutes.

Unfortunately, I can’t give any information on specific wing design because of the DBF competition, but what I can say is these molds will be used for different construction methods such as covering the mold with composites to make it smooth and use it as is, use the mold to make a composite shell and then remove the mold and have a hollow wing, or make a wooden rib-and-skin wing. Parts of the fuselage may also be molded, and I’ve gotten to make some of those in past years using coordinate data I plotted in Matlab (finally, a practical chance to use the math I learned!).

Or really 1.1-Upgrade.

This year I need to have a different game plan.  The past few years I’ve been racking up plenty of experience being on design teams and different clubs, but if I want a Masters, I’m gonna need to put the focus back onto grades.  Here are a few things to help motivate me so that I can have my cake and eat it too: (more…)

…a little bit of resting time. It’s been a busy day today at the office, but it’s been fun. Sometimes I am concerned about having two jobs and its effects on my studying, but so far I don’t see it interfereing. I mean I’m not having any problem right now, right?

Anyway, This year’s house government is going great, (more…)