Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams

NORSTAR is finally completing the long drawn out process of making the Ultrasonic Cane’s electronic components. We are now getting ready to put all of our components together, which entails the power source, ultrasonic amplifier, and other various parts, to get our project on the way to helping the visually impaired. Preparations are also going underway for the MIT trip coming up in a week or so. We can’t wait to show everyone our product and we hope that it will be finalized and marketed soon.

Today, we presented the Torch Cord™ locally at Montgomery College. We presented for children from the ages of 5-9, as a part of a college tour they were participating in. It was a great opportunity for us to get feedback and new ideas from the younger kids. They presented us with many more ideas that we will definitely take into account as we develop the Torch Cord™ and related inventions. It was a great experience for the team members because it gave us more practice for the presentation at MIT. We made minor changes in the presentation because of the younger audience. We used smaller words and different examples from those in our “Elevator Speech” so that the kids could understand them. It was a lot of fun and we may be presenting for them again sometime soon!

May has come at last and the deadline to complete our project looms ever closer.  One of the major priorities this month was to work on compiling our information in order to complete the summary report.  As a means of maximizing efficiency, we decided to split the report into several parts so that each team member could focus on writing a particular subject.  Afterward, we switched our respective sections and made any corrections and improvements as necessary.  This enabled us to merge all the individual pieces together, giving us more time to make any final corrections as they were needed for the final submission.

Our team is also anxiously awaiting the arrival of our prototyping software so that we can create our display model. Now that the burden of the summary report has been lifted, we can again focus on EurekaFest ‘09.

Also during this month we received the stamped metal pieces for our array from a local manufacturer who was able to help us in this process.  The parabolic trough is now ready to be constructed so we can continue running tests on the condensing side of the project. 

This comes, however, after we achieved a major breakthrough with our project.  Although the test was not entirely accurate to the form we hope to market when we finally complete the project, we were able to yield water from the humid air leaving the dehydrator.  Since all of our pieces are not yet completed we decided to surround the exhaust tube from the dehydrator with a bag of ice to cool the air inside the tube.  The tube was positioned into a plastic container and any holes/crevices were filled to prevent air leaks and the entrance of water from the melting ice which would ruin the test.  This worked and we were ecstatic that our idea had finally come to fruition, giving the necessary boost of enthusiasm to continue working on the project.

Good luck to the rest of the teams and we can’t wait to see you and your projects at EurekaFest…less than a month away!

This month we have covered a lot of ground.  We now have the components for our lift design all together.  Some of our students went out in to the machine shop and worked on the parts.  We have had a few problems with all the parts fitting in the right places, so we had to change some of the parts.  This did not set us back on time, but merely was an inconvenience.  Within the next few days we should have all the parts together and working.