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?
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
Lately I’ve been on a fashion-y bent. I want to gain the basic skills needed to express my feelings about myself and the world (namely feminism, and often a lot of anger at the status quo).
Marcela helped me with this. We dumped all the powder (100g) from the Jamila bag into a bowl.
added a cup of lemon juice
and mixed it
and then covered and waited 12 hours.
The next day (after the 12 hour wait) I added in 1oz (the whole bottle) of cajeput essential oil
and mixed.
After another 24 hours, I poured the mixture into an ice cube tray.
Then I stuck it all in the freezer in a plastic bag inside aluminum foil (to keep the light out).
designs
I offered henna at one of my parties. Ankur drew a narwhal
and Julian drew electrical engineering symbols / circuits. It’s shiny because we used a spray bottle filled with lemon juice and sugar (to make the lemon juice sticky)
This is what it looked like after a day (the darkest is day 2).
On my other hand Marcela drew a tree and I doodled a robot.
I felt a little awkward about it (someone asked me if I’d gotten these at a wedding… which was not the case).
applicators
I chose to apply it with a cake decorating bag and some reallly realllllly fine cake tips from karenscookies.net. The idea is that with the coupler, changing out tips would be very fast. The Ateco coupler worked with with the wilton tips and the ateco tips I got.
Ateco Tip 00 $1.39
Ateco Tip 000 $1.39
Ateco Coupler $.079
Wilton Decorating Tip #1 $1.39
Shipping $4.95
However, in practice, I think in the future I would go with rolling my own cones to have more control over the tip. I’m told you can cut at a slant and that way, by controlling the angle and pressure of application, vary the line width a lot.
I also gave some thought as to the cultural appropriateness of doing this. In the end, I think I concluded that henna was used in enough different cultures that as long as I stayed away from traditional / religious designs that I didn’t understand / wasn’t a part of, it was ethically okay.
Wearing everyday clothing from another culture as daily wear (i.e. appropriately) is not necessarily appropriative, though it is privileged in the sense that you will not be treated as “fresh off the boat” when you do so. (http://freethoughtblogs.com/heinous/2014/08/19/cultural-appropriation/)
I agreed with the sentiment
Nonetheless what I really want to convey is that the meaning behind cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation is being inappropriately used and instead of holding an angry, vindictive attitude towards others, we should be the wiser person and teach them and show them the beauty of culture.
and want to strive to be more in accordance with it. For a while I was offended at the idea of adding cheese to dumplings, until I talked to my dad who thought it was a great idea (just like easy tacos!) and realized perhaps my sentiment derived out of an insecurity about how Chinese I was.
Overall, I really liked the xojane article below.The basic idea here is that our parents had everything to gain by their culture being accepted, while as 1st generation (for me, “ABC” or “american-born chinese”) we may overcompensate for being “between cultures” (and others, not me, have had the experience of being mocked for their culture) and be hostile towards other people adopting our culture.
