Part 1 - Discovery

This week I've decided to talk about three cool things I've come across.

The Ink Converter

For my latest pen-making endeavour, I decided to put together a fountain pen. Just the other day, having a conversation with Aaron (one of the people in my peer review group for this course), I realized he uses fountain pens on a regular basis, so we talked briefly about inks and colors. Then he asked how I dealt with refilling the converter.

See, I've used both converters and cartridges on my fountain pens, without really giving the matter a second thought. But the moment Aaron asked about it, I immediately started thinking about how the ones I have are rather different. The oldest one is a rather simple piston design, much like a basic syringe. You pull on the piston and it creates a vacuum, filling the cavity with either air or ink.

The new one I got for the pen I made recently, however, actually has a lead screw! Such a small modification makes the converter easier to work with and, more importantly, easier to control without spilling ink.

Carbon Fiber 3D Printers

During a project I worked on last semester, we learned about a company that prints reinforced parts with carbon fiber, fiberglass or kevlar. So, what's special or new about this, that I find it worth talking about in this Seek & Geek? This week I had the opportunity to visit their facility and learn more about their machines, the design process they went through, and some of the innovations they brough into their most recent launch!

If you haven't heard of them, I definitely encourage you to check them out:

• MarkForged - High Strength 3D Printing

JPE - Engineering One-pagers

I mentioned this resource in PUP 3, for its summary on Hertz Contact. However, I've been looking thru a few more topics and have decided it's definitely a resource worth knowing about and worth keeping around.

Janssen Precision Engineering has a series of summaries covering topics from beam bending, to material properties, to optics, controls, electronics... Rules of thumb, typical values and most relevant equations are paired with clear visuals in a handy almost poster-style layout.

• JPE - Precision Point