Category Archives: Thoughtful

on strange battlebots mind-allergies

October 11, 2015 nouyang 1 Comment

watching battlebots just makes me sad.

i don’t how to express it–

as one of my friends put it, he got into battlebots and decided to become an engineer because he watched battlebots 10 years ago. now battlebots is on the TV again, inspiring more young boys to become engineers.

people participating in battles are overwhelmingly male-dominated. it’s all about competition and destruction.

robotics to me is something that brings me joy, and happiness, and a feeling that i am competent and skillful, a medium for me to express my creative muse.

i want everyone to enjoy building robots. but where’s the TV show that exposes the funny robots, the creative robots, the helping robots and wondrous robots that people build?

where’s the show that will get more girls interested in robotics than boys?

i am sad because i see a future ahead of me where i am always abnormal.

sure, i can be dedicated to my craft and ignore all this and just be badass and build robots so amazing that i inspire all the girls to be roboticists without even having to pay attention to these issues. that’s probably the only way to do it, to have a single-minded dedications and hone my skills in robotics until i’m near or at the top of the field. that’s how all the people interviewed on MAKERS Women in Space seem to have done it. but some part me is just —

watching battlebots — i should enjoy it, because my friends participate in it and find a lot of joy in it. but where are the grassroots competitions and friends for me to enjoy making dancing and drawing robots and educational robots with?

for whatever reason;

watching battlebots just makes me incredibly sad.

Hardware, Misc., Thoughtful

Waterjet pastries? Edelweiss Patisserie Plant Visit (April 2015)

October 11, 2015 nouyang

Did you know your trader joe’s brownies in Boston are cut with a waterjet?

first, youtube

On the internet, I watched a video about waterjets containing a shot of a waterjet cutting pastries.

A few more (well, a lot) youtube links later,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO21TOzXEH0 with mobile x-y axis head

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCYGBX80F0w with scara arm

turns out that right in Medford, MA there is a waterjet being used in production at a bakery called “Edelweiss Patisserie”.

Based on their website, they are essentially a contract manufacturer for baked goods. So cool!

We produce more than products that fit your business needs—we create pastries that enhance your product line.

Our customers are category leaders in the food industry, including supermarket and club store chains, restaurants and cafes. They demand innovative, unique products to meet the needs of their sophisticated consumers and their own margin and turn standards.

We invest in product development and have the manufacturing flexibility to create almost any dessert our customers could imagine. Our business is driven by what our customers want, and we deliver! When we say we offer only the highest quality products, we mean it.

I emailed the contact email, and lo and behold, a few weeks later, the very kind owner of the place replied! He was held up by the Easter holidays.

plant visit

Thus, one spring day we drove over to Edelweiss.

We got a sweet tour of the place by the owner himself. The place is gigantic (the pictures don’t do it justice). Here, the owner talks a little about the supply chain and inventory management needed to run the place.

There was a recycling machine that crushed boxes

into neat cubes, WALL-E style 🙂

Industrial quantities of strawberries

and trash bins full of tapioca starch put the batch ingredients we use for putz’s (where I lived during undergrad) liquid nitrogen ice cream event (cryofac) to shame.

Vat of oil half as tall as me.

There were horizontal bandsaws used to plane pastries

Here’s just a few croissants

The ovens were pretty cool because

they had this mechanism inside that would lift an entire rack of pastries up so that they could be rotated and evenly heated while baking. Sort of like an industrial version of the toy vending machines with the claw you use to try to grab plushies.

Giant chocolate machine, chocoma (I think the name is funny)

waterjet machine for baked goods

Note: This waterjet uses water only (at 60kpsi), no garnet (it’d get all over your cake! :P)

Finally we came to the highlight, a waterjet from ?Spain? that cuts baked goods (and is in use all the time when the plant is running).

Here’s a closeup of the interface.

The designs are pre-programmed, there’s a simple shape editor, and then other designs are emailed in to the manufacturer to be converted into DXF or whatever

video of it cutting

in more detail

what was cut:

filters

right side (pump?)

left side (intensifier?)

They told this awesome story of the seal on one of the components breaking, and then they cut it themselves on the machine. Secretly, they are engineers now too 🙂

Here’s the part they fixed (maybe a water trap??), which is to the rear of the machine on the left side:

chiller

The mechanism

The grille

The grille was a little worn!

misc. technology

face detector for a high-tech version of punching in and out

labelmaker

wrapping

all ready to be shipped!

and our going away present

The end.

gallery

(150ish pictures) in fast-loading form:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113942194695013581888/EdelweissWaterjetCake22April2015#

same pictures in more modern webdesign look (idk what is google doing with all their photo services):
https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipP4l6DjOm33q_sNXtFdvoF0heVceXYI27uKR_BQ

Fashion, Gender, Thoughtful

nail saloon parties: laseretched stamping plates, water marbling / hydrographic printing, toner transfer, and magnetic nail polish

August 16, 2015 nouyang 1 Comment

nail saloon

I’ve been holding nail saloon parties at my place, the idea being it would be a place where people should feel welcome to ask questions about things they might feel awkward about normally, and also a chance for me to learn about other people’s experiences that I don’t know much of anything about.

Although it turned out to be mostly preaching to the choir, I’ve improved friendships through it, learned about other people’s lives, and also experimented with nail art with folks!

Here’s a few “pieces”. I drew this with the applicators that came on the bottle (and a toothpick, I think)

laser-etched stamping plates

I tried to make stamping plates (lasercut) — here’s how the professional ones look: https://youtu.be/HxIFgvfPC1c?t=1m29s — however, I think, because I was in a hurry, the etch depth was not deep enough

(and also, we were using test tube stoppers instead of soft round stamps that conform to your nail more).

newspaper toner transfer

One person successfully did newspaper transfer, but that was perhaps one successful one try out of ten…

Here’s the instructions, using rubbing alcohol.

And if you’re not having luck, just fake it with sharpie 🙂

ombre

aka, a color gradient. this is a simple technique, just take a cosmetic sponge, put two or three colors next to each other, and then dab away — tada, you have a gradient!

the middle finger is “ombre” here

magnetic nail polish

it works! turns out you need to get the magnet patterns.

the thumb and fourth finger have gold magnetic nail polish applied

Update 8/16/15: For those wondering about MRI compatibility — it so happens I had an MRI done recently with some magnetic nail polish still on my nails. It was totally fine (not even a slight pull), and they also have a nifty device that checks if you have metal things on you before you enter the MRI room.

stickers

these sadly only lasted maybe a few days, even with a topcoat applied on top of the stickers

tools

I hunted around for a local source of things like dotting tools (for making dots) and eventually found them right at Target!

the sticker “masks” above did not work too great, but the dotting tool was handy 🙂

testimonial

“I guess I never noticed how often I take off my socks in the presence of other people until now. An eye-opening find on it’s own! I think I shall paint them from now on. It’s like the personalization of a tattoo without the peril.” — K. S.

water marbling

This is just dropping different colors into a cup of water and dipping your nails in it. I did this successfully (you want solid colors usually, and some nail polishes do not work (just dissolve into the water)). Here’s a friend’s:

Here’s the coolest water marbling of nails I’ve seen

Here’s the fun technical equivalent at SIGGRAPH

conclusion

Overall, quite a bit of fun 🙂

orange narwhals