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Category: equipment

Published on Leave a comment on Mayor’s Summer Works at LVL1 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LDNFNVgJy4M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Over the summer, member Divinity Rose coached a team of Junior Achievers as they worked to develop their technology based product and startup "Sensor Buddies."  The team was being paid as part of the Mayor's Summer Works program that employed 4200 youth over the summer. The team of three 17-year-old students from Central High School learned to solder and use many of our resources, including the wood shop, vinyl cutter, and laser cutter.

Their experiences at Lvl 1 facilitated growth, confidence building, and creative problem solving; it was so inspiring to see each of their individual strengths blossom. You can see their summary of the summer in the video below.

We look forward to seeing what they accomplish this year as senior in the business magnet program at Central High School with their teacher Dana Kelly. Thank you Mayor Fischer for facilitating such a great program.

 

Published on Leave a comment on Shapeoko build night

Shapeoko

On June 2nd, 2014 it was announced that LVL1 won a Shapeoko2 CNC machine kit in the Inventables 50 States 3D Carving Machine Giveaway contest.

The Shapeoko is a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine which in its default configuration uses a light-duty rotary tool as the spindle. It is a 3-axis machine; able to move the mounted tool up/down, left/right, and forward/backward under computer control with some measure of repeatable precision.

This Friday night (8/22/14) we are going to start building this machine. Drop by at 8 pm if you are interested in helping. It should be fun and a great opportunity to learn a little about CNC hardware.

Meanwhile, here is the LVL1 wiki page for you to read: wiki.lvl1.org/Shapeoko_CNC_build

Hope to see you there!
Brian

Published on Leave a comment on Solar Panel Fabrication Set Up

All the necessary equipment to make reliable solar panels is now set up at LVL1.  This includes a custom built oven with a vacuum sealing system capable of making panels up to 15x21 inches, but no worries for bigger projects individual panels can be wired together in series or parallel and with the right framing anything is possible.  A further break down of this oven and the panel making process is coming in the future.  Along with the oven a tile saw has been set up with a 0.015" thick diamond blade.  This saw can be used to cut scrap or non-scrap of mono or poly crystalline solar cells into usable custom sizes to fit the needs of various projects.  The only other equipment needed to make a panel is a soldering iron, which LVL1 has plenty of.  Only some materials for making solar panels will be available the rest will need to be purchased.  For more info contact Sam Ellis at srelli02@louisville.edu.

The set up:

Example of a solar panel made using the equipment followed by a table of its performance characteristics:

Isc:   0.4485 A

Voc:   16.8 V

PowerMax:  5.1 W

Imax:  0.3845 A

Vmax:  13.28 V

Fill factor:  0.6697

% Efficiency:  12.36%

 

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Published on 1 Comment on Donate to the Laser Cutter fund!

Admit it, you have always wanted to build a penny sized dinosaur

Well here is your chance! LVL1 is raising money to buy a laser cutter for the space. With a laser cutter you can do all sorts of neato things like this...

http://www.epiloglaser.com/sample_club.htm

Scroll thought the link and think about what you want to make. Then donate to the laser cutter fund. The sooner we make it to $2500, the sooner we can get a laser cutter for all to share. IT IS GONNA BE SO AWESOME!

Here is the Laser Cutter we are going to buy.

http://www.fullspectrumengineering.com/co2laserv2-40w.html

and a video of it in action...

As you can see, you want to give to this fund! Watch the progress bar on the right side of this blog to see how much further we have to go!

By using the donate button below you will be taken to Paypal to make a donation to the laser cutter fund. When you use this button the donation is earmarked for the laser cutter fund, not the general fund.






DO IT FOR THE DINO!