We’ve begun some experimenting with PLA 3D printed parts to determine how they’re affected by exposure to water and ice, and to see if we can use a coating to make them waterproof.
Erin has designed an STL of a nalgene lid, and Beck has printed it. For the first round of testing, we’ll do the following experiments:
Placing a part in water for a set amount of time
Placing a part in water, freezing it, thawing it, and repeating it.
Next we’ll try the same experiments, but we’ll treat the part with sealant first.
In this first round of testing, we used a plastic tupperware container to freeze the part.
Surprisingly, it survived fairly well, even without any surface treatment! One small crack occurred on the inside of the cap.
Observed many polystyrene pieces by the lake. Though individually they were easy to overlook at a quick glance given their small size, there were clusters that formed, even landing well above the rocks forming a water wall. Here’s some photos of the observations:
These pieces are polystyreneCollecting in areas where there are rocksAlmost looks like snow, but it’s not…The clusters can even be seen from further away – where it’s whitePolystyrene pieces caught amongst intertwined pieces of grassPolystyrene pieces collecting near these rocksPolystyrene pieces between these smaller rocksNow the polystyrene pieces are captured between these rocksDown these steps is where many of the polystyrene pieces are situatedSome of the polystyrene pieces land above the steps onto the grassClose up of the polystyrene pieces which are now on land
Hypothesis: Watching water flow routes during the thaw could help us better plan for heavy rainfall events to avoid additional sediment and coastal erosion.
The thaw is starting here. We can observe the erosion in action. Here’s what it looks like at a beach.
Erosion path at the top of the beach
Mid way pointWater flowing downhillMidway point downhillDraining to the lakeVideo showing this erosion pathThere is ice and snow underneath some of the sand layer. It will be interesting to see how the melting of those layers will contribute to the additional erosion.It will also be interesting to see what the restoration action will be based on this. At the same park, here is a different location, though it is not draining to the lake as rapidly.Water in a big puddle Exit location of the big puddle to the top of the beachPath of erosion on the beach
Why is this interesting? If we had more precise data on where the water does travel based on the soil, then…
We could design better routes for the water to get to the lakeAND/ORWe could design better temporary drainage basins
This will be an interesting site to observe over the coming weeks of the thaw.
This post was written and uploaded from the field for the first time on this blog. Hope it works! ?
At the closeup view, watching the water flowing is interesting to see the different colours and small grains of sand movingWords
The AR draggable power-up functionality has now reached a stable state that’s good enough for a version 0.1. Updates to the code made it more modular for multiple markers, for 3 element power ups, and now the power up rectangle that is placed onto the marker knows when it has done so. The power up rectangles only appear when there’s a marker in view. The next step will be to download the libraries that are used and make sure it works with the latest version of everything. After that will be making some new markers, and then merging the code with MQTT. Also, catch-up has to be done for the previous logs… oops. Well, by the time this is posted, the previous 5 are now caught up too.
Quick tech log to note that the instance is back up and running again, and the AWS credits missing was resolved! Did some high level searching on what next to tackle with that, and it will be learning more about Route 53, DNS, SSL certificate manager, and React Native. This will come a bit later though, the biggest priority at hand is to make this prototype work.
Basic blinking is done. It works! The analog value from the temperature sensor is received on serial monitor. Will need to remember in the future to go back and look at the actual formula used in the datasheet to go from this value to one in degrees Celsius. Before printing the pieces, work will have to be done on the 3D printer since it is experiencing an issue at some places on the build platform. Next step is back to the software, getting the AR draggable functionality working and ready to be merged with MQTT. Summary post is up on Patreon here
Erosion path at the top of the beach
Midway point downhill
Draining to the lakeVideo showing this erosion path
There is ice and snow underneath some of the sand layer. It will be interesting to see how the melting of those layers will contribute to the additional erosion.It will also be interesting to see what the restoration action will be based on this. At the same park, here is a different location, though it is not draining to the lake as rapidly.
Water in a big puddle 
Exit location of the big puddle to the top of the beach
Path of erosion on the beach
