ICC

Friday was a day spent at ICC. For most of the day, we all worked on our projects. However, throughout the day, we all had meetings with ICC's EPD 2 and EPD 4 classes. They have been assigned some projects and have entered the project cycle, just as we have. The meetings were meant for us to be guides and mentors for the ICC students and to help them in any way that we could, giving them advice about their papers and about their projects.

We also had a meeting with Jon Byrne, from ICC. He helped us develop a more formal format for our future technical papers. He also met with each of the project groups and went through their Request for Project Proposal. He didn't know much about our projects, but he knew a lot about grammar and what is presentable and appropriate for technical papers and what should be reserved for less technical type documents. It was interesting to learn.

Today, we are back at IRE and we're continuing to work on our projects. This afternoon will be the second design review for our projects. I believe this review will be focused on how we are learning the competencies that we have stated we will learn in the RFPP.

Proofed by: Cory Moran

Dan's Raft Cart

Our initial project for this semester is to build Dan a raft cart. For this raft cart project, we were assigned to build a cart to transport an inflatable raft. This raft is used on the Alaskan shore, so seawater will be present. This constraint, limits the building materials we can choose from due to corrosion factors. The cart is being built for our new teacher Dan. One of his needs is that he wants it to be light enough so that his wife could also be able to use it. The main objective for the cart is to transport the raft from his cabin to the shoreline, over rocks and other rough terrain. Our design was built around these constraints. We used ProE to model our initial design for the first design review. For me, getting used to ProE again was a little work. I had not used the program extensively since my first semester of freshman year at ICC. I was amazed at the commands and controls I remembered after only a short amount of time. By the end of the day I had built multiple parts for the cart. In one day, the group modeled a complete cart, a raft, and two handle attachments. We will meet Dan later today to recieve feedback on our initial design.

proofed by Austin

Super Cooled

Today the Sauna Heater Team had the opportunity to play with heat transfer. This team has the task to provide a product that has the ability to heat a 6'x8'x7' sauna from 65 to 170 degrees Fahrenheit. The city of Virginia, MN steam heats about 2,500 accounts, businesses and residents. The steam plant on the other side of Silver Lake burns biomass to create steam. The steam is fed through turbines to knock down the pressure to 50 psig (pounds per square inch gauge), and to create a little electricity. The steam is fed through insulated copper piping to houses around town. Our group of 4 is going to use this steam heat to warm our consumer's sauna. Three of my group members: Erin, Richie, and Deric, have had thermodynamics. I have not taken thermodynamics yet. This provides for a very interesting learning experience to say the least. Today I learned about super heated steam and sub-cooled steam. I kept calling it super cooled steam because it sounded sweet. One group member didn't seem to like it as much and made sure to correct me often. Since the steam around town is anywhere from 10-50 psig. We are under the assumption that the steam is super cooled or I mean sub cooled. What this means is that its right or below 212 degree saturation temperature; below this temperature it is classified as a sub-cooled liquid. If it was above its saturation temperature of 212 degrees it would be super heated. Saturation temperature is where a phase change occurs so liquid water boils at 212 at sea level so this is its saturation temperature. Today at IRE I'm one step further on my Thermodynamics journey.

 

Proofed by: Ewin

Projects and Mankato

Last Thursday marked the start of our project cycle. We're starting with a relatively small, internal project. This project will be used as a test run for the future project cycles to come. The group that has been working on the Blandin Project will continue working on this project. Another group will be working on a cart for a raft and the other group will be working on a sauna heater. Today, our first Request for Project Proposal is due for the project. All the projects have the due date of February 11. I'm excited to see how everything works out, and to learn what goes right and what can be improved, so that our methods will be improved.

Over the weekend, all of us went down to Mankato. On the way down, we stopped and toured Owatonna Tool Company. Then, we went to Mankato. Saturday night we all went to the Minnesota State University, Mankato vs. UMD men's hockey game. We got tickets to what is called the Blue Line Club. An hour before the game, we met at their civic center. We got free food, door prizes were given away and we got to hear the MSU Mankato coach give a speech. It was a pretty sweet deal. Then we headed across the street to the arena to watch the game; where we were given access to the Presidential Box. We definitely got the royal treatment down there. It was a lot of fun.

Now we're back in Virginia, working hard at IRE once again.

Proofed by: Erin Lamke

New Semester

Though we all enjoyed the cold winter break, we are ready to put IRE into working order. The first day back, we went to NRRI to learn more about the mining process. Throughout the day we learned about mineral processing. We focused mainly on the liberation of the material. I didn't know they had so many methods to crush and break apart the rock. Crushers, rod mills, and high pressure grinding may all complete the same main task, but they all have their specific application in the mining process. We were also taught the different ways of separation and were able to see them first hand in their lab.
On Tuesday we met with both Ron and Dan. We received word that we will be launching a new project this Thursday. None of us know what it entails so we are eager to get started. We also discussed how we will format and write what we call "Request For Project Proposals". This will basically be a detailed report including an executive summary, a detailed learning plan with both learning objectives and learning modes, and a detailed design plan. We will all write one of these for each of our projects to establish an organized way to complete the project while learning the correlated professional and technical competencies.

Proofed by Tyler