Second Home

My apartment feels like it has become my second home to school. This usually happens in the last few weeks of the semester, never this early, and I'm oddly at peace with the amount of work and time spent at school now. Maybe I've just resigned myself to my fate, or have stopped caring.  The design process feels somewhat cathartic, or perhaps comatose, I'm not sure if I'm "in the zone" anymore, or just "in a daze". 

Why...

...do I get some kind of strange satisfaction from staying up til 3am working on a project. And why am I more productive and focused the night before something is due and accomplish more than I did in the past 3 weeks? I'm actually enjoying CAD'ing an alarm clock radio/speaker for DSID 134. It's fun to play with and refine shapes and patterns and color and material choices...even though it's 3am and I'm waiting for yet another view to render.

Prosthetics Progress

Working on our affordable limb project for 128, I'm designing an above-the-knee (trans-femoral) prosthesis for a child in Colombia. Were currently in initial prototyping stages, and I'm finding it challenging to create a stable testing rig that locks an able-bodied leg into a static position and evenly distributes the load so that one can walk on a prosthetic knee and lower-leg. Updates to follow, with pictures. 

3D

Today we were fortunate to get a tour of 3D Systems/Bespoke Innovations in San Francisco.  Listening to Scott talk about all of the amazing uses of 3D printed parts and technology in a variety of fields and applications reignited a bit of my passion for designing products that genuinely impact and benefit people around the world.  Our affordable prosthetic project for 128 will be a huge challenge, but I'm actually looking forward to the process as well as the final result.