I arrived at the lab today and one of the 5 DEMES (DEMES Kat 2) had broken. It left some greasy yellow stains on the white paper and the membrane had shrivelled up inside the frame. The membrane has not pulled away from the frame so it must have had a hole in it somewhere else. DEMES Kat 2 was the one I made with 2 paths going vertically through it. Maybe this was not the best design!
Today's plan was to actuate the remaining DEMESs and the other Kats 2-5. All intact- so far.
When I started trying to actuate the planer DEAs, all my copper kept falling off. I guess sitting around for nearly two weeks they lost their adhesive. So I had to spend a while fixing all of them.
Last week when I hooked up 'Kat 4' to the power box, only the koru that was directly connected to the box was actuating to its full extent. I was disappointed with this result. When we had made the motor we had 3 different cables connecting straight to the box. This is what I liked best and what we did today. 4 phases max on the control box is what we used which was enough. 'Kat 4' looked awesome and we played with the switching, timing, frequency and voltage.
'Kat 5' is different as this one doesn't seem as obvious because I only painted parts of it. 2 heads of the koru expand while the other 2 stems expand. Nifty effect but very subtle. I might look further into that.
The other DEMES works were successful too. Watching them put lots of ideas in my head. So many possibilities for these things!
Solidworks after lunch. I re-draw alot of my pencil cketches onto Illustrator, a computer drawing programme. Now in order to laser cut my drawings I have to convert them and trace them onto Solidworks. This is great software but hard to get used to. I can't wait to start cutting my own designs into plastic very soon.
