Week12 report

It has been three months since I came here. Still have two more months to go. As the time goes by, my attachment is getting more and more interesting. It snowed this week. Everything was coated with white color. I witnessed the first snow in Bochum. Here are some photos I took on my way to school. Beautiful~

I went to a party with friends from the solar car team this week. It was organized by students from department of Medicine in Ruhr University. It was a nice party. I won few bottles of beer from my friends. Got free beer to drink…(Of cause happy.hah…)

We have a workshop in school last weekend. It was conducted by a professional trainer from outside company. It is designed for all the new members to learn how to work with carbon fiber and glass fiber from some hands-on practices. It is more like a chemistry lesson for me. Although it was conducted in German, but thanks to Arne who help me translate. And help me get a guide book in English from the company. It is like a “Bible” for fiber.hah… In this post, I will only show some basic steps involves in making a glass fiber mold. Description that is more detailed will be shown in my final report.

Here is our trainer. He is very tall by the way.haha… He was teaching us how to mix the chemicals. The chemicals we use are quite danger. The amounts of two different chemicals need to be calculated in advance. In case of these two chemicals “cooking” when mix them together. (Strong reaction, it will look like boiling, so they call it “cooking”.) A standard way of mixing these chemicals needs to be followed.

Our objective is to build a negative mold base on a positive mold of a car door (as you can see in the photo) using glass fiber. Then Use this negative mold, we will make a positive mold with carbon fiber.(it will be anther workshop next week.) He was applying some chemical to increase the quality of the surface.

Cutting of glass fiber. We were using a special type of scissor to cut the fiber. It is extremely sharp which made for cutting the fiber; applied chemicals on the glass fiber. In order for the chemical to penetrate into fiber, we need to press the paint roller hard. At the same time, by doing this we can then tighten the fiber structure.

Holes on the mold need to be filled with short fibers. Then it is ready for lamination. Layers of Glass fiber were then placed on the mold in sequences.

Rolling on the surface, then added a wood structure on top of it at last. So that’s all. (Sounds simple right? But it took us one day to do it.)

We also built some small parts for testing. To compare the difference between carbon fiber and glass fiber; and how the thickness of a form can change the strength of the part. And finally how to use vacuum technique to suck out excess chemical.

I also try them out myself. Build two part using carbon fiber and glass fiber. I will bring them back to Singapore.hah… (Just evidences for showing to the school. And kind of souvenir as well.) haha…

Have a nice weekend…I have a second workshop tomorrow. See you.
(Left: Arne was repairing his bike. Right: Martin gets drunk in the party.) hah…

week11 report

This week was quite a nice week for me. Here we go!

I knew some Spanish friends recently. They are friends of Luis’s. (Luis is my flat mate.) You can hear some Spanish songs at the right side, While you are listening to the music, Let me tell you my understanding about Spanish: Spanish are friendly; enthusiasm (like the hot weather in Spain or like their music you are listening, music can reflect part of their culture.); they eat dinner at 10 pm; They love party; they speak very fast (only by now, I know how to differentiate between Spanish and German, by listening how fast they speak,).

Some Spanish friends came to our flat to have a small party, drink some wine, playing guitar, singing. I was there with them. Although I don’t understand what they were singing. But I do enjoy it. After few bottles of beer. It was about 12 at the midnight. I was about to sleep. But then it ended up some Spanish suggested to go to the University, because there is a big party over there. So Boh Pian, I went to the university with them. And everybody was very high. We danced until 5AM in the morning. And my whole body is very paint next day. (Long time never exercise.) Haha…

Some Spanish asked me whether I can cook Chinese food for them. Because they have never tried real Chinese food before, (food in Chinese restaurant is not taste that “China”.hah…) so I cooked some Chinese food plus one Nionya food from Southeast Asia which I learned it in Singapore. They enjoyed the meal even though they are not good at using chopstick. after the meal they invited me to their house, they will cook some French food for me.

Therefore, I went to their flat in Friday night. And that was my first time saw snowing. I was so excited to see it happening right in front of me. That was the first snow in my life. They are so beautiful. I also forget my age, playing with snow like a kid. Trying to eat snow from the sky, catch snow when they falling down, fighting each with hand made snowball. That is awesome! hah…

I went to Holland (Netherlands) last weekend. It was a great trip to there. We went to windmill village, it is like a 世外桃源 (village which isolated from the world outside.).

This is a visit to the wooden shoes shop. There was a demonstration on how to make a shoe. It takes about 3,4 weeks to make one manually. But now, with the help of machine. It only takes about 5 minute. The idea is like making a copy of a key. One block of wood placed together with one completed shoe. After few minutes, one “cloned shoe” is then produced.

This is how they making the cheese. For me,I can’t tell the difference between different kind of cheese.

This is windmill, name card for Holland. Holland is a windy country. Windmill was built to drain water away from wetland in the old time. After years of development, it became machine for industrial purpose used. Such as flour milling. It was then taken over by steam engines. Inside the windmill, we can see the how they transfer wind energy into mechanical power. One thing that I think it is quite amazing is that, the entire components are made of wood! And they still running today. These two edge runner stones weighing about 5000 to 7000KG. Power! This is a perfect example of harnessing the clean energy from the Mother Nature in the old time. By now, more and more wind turbine was built to convert wind energy into electricity, of cause, higher efficiency.

The capital of Holland, Amsterdam. It is like Venice in the north Europe. It also has canals all over the city. So we took a tourist ship, tour around the city.

Visit to the diamond processing plant to see how they transform a “stone” into a shiny diamond.

Amsterdam is famous as its sex culture. We went to red-light district (place like Geyland in Singapore) and sex museum. hah…The world is really marvelous! Due to some adult content. I am not going to post photos here.hah…

Palace in Amsterdam

OK! Now back to my project. I have finished with the grids drawing in “solid works”. While I am keying the coordinate dates manually, we are looking for a way to export the data automatically. We still working on it.

We have finished two negative forms for the new car this week. and get it delivered from EEW in Kiel to Bochum. We were working in Opel. (car manufacturer in Germany.) They provided us a big workshop. We did some surface polishing on the negative form.

There is workshop in the school this weekend to teach new members how to use carbon fiber and glass fiber. OT this weekend. Sianz…hah…have a nice weekend!