The rise of 3-D printing

3D printing, or additive manufacturing has been gaining a lot of grounds recently. There are even people that are comparing 3D printing to the next industrial revolution. True or not, we can not ignore the fact that it is becoming more prevalent and also more affordable to the general public.

3D printing is not a new invention, according to 3ders the first 3-D printer came around 1984. However, the fast decreasing cost for resins and printer cost is what is making it caught on. The vision is that soon, general consumers will be bale to customize products exactly to their needs Merchandise like this toothbrush that are made customized to anyone's teeth is no longer matter of possibility but matter of price.

There are also a large community out there for building 3 D printers, since the current cost range for a commercial one range from $2000 to $15000.  Take a look at this recent kick starter project that are promoting homemade 3D printers as low as $100.

The good news are not just for general consumers too, big companys have also started eyeing on 3D printing, most likely due to the possbibilities of complex shape and the ease it may have transfering from design to manufacturing. A while ago, GE just announced that they have used  3-D printed nozzle parts for their LEAP-1A engine. This raises some good possibilities as it is easy to see if part of a jet engine will be using parts that are 3D printed, they obviously meet the stringent requirement of the traditional manufactured part.

Maybe 3D printer will bring the the  new wave of change like the PC did back in the 90s.

Time in EPICS

 

EPICS is probably the best preparation for students who are looking to get real experiences while still having the "bullet proof jacket" of being a student, i.e. making mistakes will not result in catastrophic results.

I have only been involved with my current team since the beginning of this semester. Our team, Global Alternative Power Solutions (GAPS) focuses on designing low cost, sustainable solar systems for areas with low power infrastructure. The team is quite new, with young members who have very good drive and are still very creative with designs. Comparatively, this means the team is lacking some technical expertise and the background to deliver final solutions.

As I am one of the senior member in the team, my focus this semester is to complete the final detail engineering for an off grid solar panel system that is capable of providing power for a day to an elementary school at a remote site in Colombia. The system has been reviewed and feasibility has been tested, however, the previous, younger team has not specified any information regarding the quantity of exact components, commissioning, and delivery of the solution.
With my process modeling background from one of my co-op assignments, I was able to pull the old materials together and through some programing, automated the system components selection process. This way, if any changes from the partners are communicated, changes can be made quickly. This also helped the rest of the team as they start a design for a similar system specified for a chicken coop in Haiti.

The most rewarding experience out of this course though, is not the contribution I was able to make, but perhaps the opportunity I get from interacting with the other members. Since I am working with students outside of mechanical engineering, a lot of materials need to be quickly covered in a crash course manner. New graphs, figures need to be made as they have different level of familiarity. This process really put what I have learned in the past to test, it also shines lights on a lot of the visual aspects I have not been paying attention to in the past. Most importantly, when the explanations pay off after the other party nod with a “big cheese” on their faces, it is just incomparable to any other courses I have taken at Purdue.

GAPS Team Website: http://epics.ecn.purdue.edu/gaps/

Culture Context Amongst us

http://www.thinknpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/lostintranslation.jpg?w=300

We often hear of the phrase “lost in translation”, and surely, all of us have encountered this in some form.

Take the word “you” for example, “You” in English is used to address the second person and it’s definitely translatable to any other language. However, while I was learning English, I have always had problems addressing my teachers with “you”. For anyone that has ever tried to learn another language, more than likely they have encountered “you” in different forms: The formal one, “Sie” in German, or “Vous” in French which can also be used as plural forms, the other, “du” or “tu”, typically to be used in an intimate or informal situation.

Unlike French or German, “you” only comes in one form in English. I on the other hand, being raised in a traditional Taiwanese family with a Confucian background, calling my teacher “you” indicates an informal setting. Having been taught to respect my elders, especially teachers, it just seemed wrong to me.

My non Taiwanese peers though, never seemed to have problems with this. They are fine addressing the teacher as “you”, and they have no hesitation in saying “I don’t understand”, which with the Confucian mind set, translates to “your explanation is bad, do it again”.
Of course, that is probably not their intention and I eventually learned that these mental conflicts stem from the differences in a culture’s context. A high context culture tend to have very specific meanings for words in specific situations while a low context culture has less emphasis on specific messages from words to words.

High context culture embeds tradition and history within the language which sometimes adds specific cues and calls for different reactions in situations. For lower context cultures, messages are passed much more explicitly and no further interpretation are needed during communication.
As my English proficiency has improved, I have adapted to these culture context cues and I am no longer bothered by the conflicts between languages. In fact, the more I learn about culture context in different languages, the more I enjoy distinguishing them. With the internet being used by users of all background, it is now easy to search for words that cannot be directly translated into English, which somehow, makes “lost in translation” almost an obsolete term as countless users continues to thrive on explaining each terms, in different languages.

Tianlong Valley

We spent the last full day we had in the area exploring the great out doors and joined a tour group to see the area. We visited an old militia built to keep barbarians (or non-Hans) away from Han's territory. Originally, we were also scheduled to go see the southern segment of the Great Wall, but some issues with logistics deterred the plan.

Here's how it went: We gathered at out meeting point at 7 in the morning to find out our driver "had picked up some people" to do make some side cash so he was gonna be 30-45 min late. Then, when he finally arrived for us, there were apparently "tourism police" that were checking for overloaded buses...

ready to fit ~30 people in a 18 people bus, and our destination was 1 hour away

The solution? easy, we are gonna cut out a part of the packaged tour so we can use the ticket money for the Wall to pay for another van to take the people that could not fit...

The guide did promise we will get to see it from a distance though, and come to think of it, it's really just a long wall (but it's the wall! -some strange dilemmas here). In retrospect, it may all just be a scam to cover up false advertising from the start :(

When we arrived at the first stop, I was surprised that the militia is actually just an abandoned building off the side of the road, there were even people living within the militia, the best part: once we arrived, our guide pulled what seemed like a random grandma from the side and spoke to her in dialect and just asked us to follow her.

She walked us around the millitia and stopped at a "vendor point" where you can do some archery at a hefty price and led us back to the guide, the entire thing was about 45 mintues.

 look at all the fun you could have!

going up the sturdy stairs

After that, we were off to see another show put up by the Miao people. The chinese tourism planners seem to love shoving these things down their packages. We jokingly made comments about it being the same thing we had saw the day before, and you guessed it...it did become a re run of last night, just without the fire. 

The show started with us being served with delicious rice wine in a bowl, at this point, we also discovered our server was a performer from the night before! They made a big intro for him being the "best drummer in the village", also, back in the morning, we had see him walking around with his friends catching rides (now realizing they were probably coming here). We exchanged some funny looks and I regretted not asking him to pose for us.

this guy, instant change from "drum master" to "the wine server"

We had much more fun watching the remaining part of the almost repeated show laughing at the idea that the rest of the performers probably performed the night before as well and were also looking out for familiar faces.

Next up, our main destination of the day, Tianlong Valley, or the sky dragon valley. The valley was located about 2 hours out of Fenghuang and had been converted to a geological park. We hiked along a stream and eventually it led us to the waterfall drop where all the water would later be collected at a dam. The hike was about 2 hours both way. The water would later turn out to be the cleanest I saw while I was in China.

Oh and remember about the promise the guide had made us? At the end of the tour, the driver took us around to this shop, and from the parking lot, we could see a little bit of the wall. Then he offered us this condolence: "Its not worth the money and no fun anyway because you will never have enough time to see it all". he did have a good point...

And that wraps up the final eventful day of our week long new year trip. The last remaining part will be a 20 hours standing train rid e back to Shanghai. I will have another post about trains next time, in the mean time, enjoy some more nights shot of Fenghuang from our one and only Brian Lee.

Fenghuang

Fenghuang is a town that's stuck in time,not only did this place still has old buildings intact and well preserved, there were also very little high risers to be seen around. Even the tourist traps seemed a little less sophisticated. At least that's how it seemed it during the day.

This town's richness came from its location. Being on the borders of ethnic minority territories, the place would turn into one giant party every month when the people who "live in the mountains" all around would come in and exchange goods and news with others. In fact, people who are in remote villages still do this now a days and it's called ganji - "going to market". Unfortunately, we did not catch this while we were here.

Gangji's significance has changed since though, instead of "going to town" to get the necessities, most of the young people in rural village have left for work in the city, so ganji is done now a days because it is the last resort for the elderly left to make a living with their handcrafts. 

I also find out soon after that Fenghuang is one of the places in the Province that suffered the most from migration problem; many people, elderly men especially, find themselves unemployed, without a family after their prime time is over, and would die alone in their houses without being discovered for a long time.

Anyways, we walked around the old town after finding ourselves a place to stay for the night waiting to experience a "camp fire party", meant to show tourists like us how they roll when Gangji is in full swing.

Fenghuang actually means Phoenix in Chinese, but with this name, the amount of "Phoenix" items were actually quite little

the ethnic minorities were known for their brews (surprise surprise), they were the best tasting alcohol we've had in China

A traveler's cafe we passed filled with visitor's train tickets, a lot of them were attached with number, friendly or not, we all left our tickets here too

Once dusk came around, we headed out of the town to attend this camp fire party hosted by the Miao people. They performed some dances, drums, and witch crafts tricks with well disguised science. Nevertheless, a lot of shouting and clapping ensued.

this guy put out the torch with his mouth. lol

they eventually went on to "white man burning"

It was all good fun, especially when they burn out Jeremy's forearm hair (no other harm was done) and he received a local bar's voucher ticket.

We returned to the town discovering that as the night rolls around, the entire place is transformed into a night club, every single shop has lights, music and laser flying around everywhere. With the voucher, and the brewskies we got earlier in the day, it's safe to say our night in Fenghuang was pretty colorful...


What's next?

Fenghuang you had us all fooled

who would have guessed

as always, group shot with a new friend we met

Longji Rice Terrace

One of the reoccurring illusions we had while traveling was the assumed distance of whatever attractions we were going to.... As per last post, you probably remembered that we ran into a weird "down time" situation since our next destination was so far away that tourist buses stop running after noon. We had never bothered to check if the Rice Paddy were close to Guilin prior to arrival, the assumption was: "it must be close by, because it comes up when I am researching about Guilin". It turned out to be a 2.5 hours bus ride.

The down time did us good though because we had the night to enjoy the city. This is where another illusion came in: "the invisible clock" ticking at the back of our heads rushing us through everything because  "we are only gonna be here once", so often times, we forget that we were actually in an incredible place and always wanted to move to the next place - a constant wanderlust.

Chinese tourist hawkers are good at exploiting this, so even though we knew better already, we were still out looking for packaged deals After a casual walk down the main street, the number of "travel agents" striking us deals were so high, they could have put Jimmy McMillan to shame. 

They were good though, with every one of them offering prices cheaper than the previous one, it was like they are specifically targeting us (which they probably were with Jeremy looking like a Russian Bear who had just ran to China)

We eventually caved down when Chinese Flo bundled us with a deal too good that combined a night stay at the hotel. I figured it couldn't hurt although it was an all Chinese tour (time to practice my real time translation skills).

at the base of the mountain. About to switch over to another smaller bus that will climb the curvy mountain road like a roller coaster cutting 180 deg turns at ungodly speed.

The tour started bright and early at 6:30 the next day as the bus driver shows up and picks up all kind of different groups. Our tour guide was much more professional than Dirty Harry that featured the Suzhou-Hangzhou group. Not only was he a master of ceremony throughout the day on the bus, he also flawlessly hid all the "shopping locations" into our trip constantly, reminding us that we were just helping the locals when buying their merchandises even trying to teach us how to haggle in their dialect. Luckily when you travel with white people that can play "I dont understand" we can work our way around these tricks pretty easily.

We first visited a local Yao village where the women traditionally grew their hair and only cut them once in their life before they get married. These were the people who generations after generations have carved out the magnificent terraces because they were not "liberated" by the communist army until 1996.

tradition or not, they bring in the money

 the show was even done in english

We also heard that during the Chinese Civil War, a lot of Nationalist soldiers were hidden around here, so the area was in lock down and who knew, the wonderful rice paddy were kept only because the locals couldn't get out and farm on the more fertile land....

street food?

show's done, back to the bus and off we go to the next stop

 After the "Long Hair Village", we finally arrived at the top of the mountain but before we get to see anything, we were kindly guided into the "local favorite restaurant" for some food. Luckily, we brought our own food and the guide want too keen on keep us there so we used the opportunity to run up the mountain before everyone get there.

Enjoy some breath taking scenes courtesy of Brian Lee because at this point of my journey in China, my camera died. sucks

For the two hours we were up there, it was probably the most peaceful time we had in China: zero honking, no shouting, and barely a person in sight, it was also because it was the middle of new years as the guide later told us horror stories of people stuck in traffic going up the mountains for 4 to 5 hours during travel peak time and some even end up denying entry in the mountains.

On the way down, we accidentally ran into a new year feast preparation. there were life stocks being brought in for what looked like a giant party, we even saw people lugging washing machine in to the village with bamboo sticks. Then, we were stopped as a cow suddenly appeared on the track, about to be finished off.....yeah...we watched it got tied down, took a few hammer blows in the head, and then boom, dinner.

ah, chicken roast, should be delicious..

oh! it's a cow

wait...i guess steak's on the menu?

After the mountain, we ventured into the packed train station for our next leg of the journey. It was our first train ride and also the first over night. We've all heard about these stories of booming train technology all in the same time how sketchy it can get at night so we were planning on taking different shifts to watch our stuff (which after 3 hours, turned into "whatever")

As we sat on the train trying to get some rest, radio started coming up, keep in mind this was past 12....The nocturnal children started wandering about (the bad ones, they stare and scream and just dont care), luckily, i sat by the window and were traveling with more interesting people.

overly excited carmen, not knowing what's about to come

after this, all documenting process stopped

The 7 hours train ride took little time to get used to, as the sun came up, we were slowly arriving at our next pit stop: Huaihua, a small city in the province of Hunan, where we will be boarding a bus to Fenghuang, our next destination.