Week 21

This week saw me helping out for the deck since the anchor well task is almost completed. I worked with Turtle and later with Oggi and Leon to glue/laminate the front curve part of the deck (do not know the name for this part of the deck).

This task was previously done by Oggi and Gomez (who had since left the course) and two end parts were already made. this left the front of the semi circle shape to be completed. Having stormed and discuss with Turtle and Leon on how best to secure the various pieces (made from off cut foams and once we glue them together) to conform to the curvature of the semi circle, it was Leon who came up with a very good idea. Leon's brilliant idea of using buggies core to tied and hold the pieces in place was taken up and tried. The result was it works. We have to still ensure that the separate foam pieces "fall" into places. We left the centre piece out so that the curvature will be better achieved. This centre piece will be glued on separate later. Got to get a photo of this!

Took this photo this morning when I went back for a while. -

We laminated the various pieces together on Tuesday and by Wednesday the result seen was good. More work would then be done on shaping and the laminated pieces (including the earlier two already pieces) ready for further laminating process next week.

Learning points for me:
1) Many ideas and brainstorming is still the best approach of the day. Being in the actual situation helps rather than braintstorming in a "vacuum".

2) The slope of the curvature has varying degrees over the whole length of the front. Tricky task to try to get the bottom angle of each piece of foam to conform to this varying gradient. I watched previous attempt by Gomez and Oggi to work on this varying gradient of the foam pieces. They tried (I think) to get the gradient individually with each piece which made the task all the more difficult and requiring more skills and precision. What we did in this week was to glue all the pieces together first with a straight edge at the bottom and then shape off the gradient for the bottom. This still required a fair amount of judgement and sanding the gradient but was much easier. The top of the foam pieces though not a straight line was much easier to work on.

3) Having watched and see how difficult (and frustrating) it had been for Oggi and Gomez then, I build on their learning and "improve" on the approach and process. This is a second loop learning outcome - or what the Japanese called "Continuous Improvement" -incremental learning; one step at a time unlike the quantum learning which is a big leap at a time. That was how the Japanese "beat" the American over the last few decades of industrialisation. Now the other "Asian Tigers" are beating the Japanese at their own game ( at reverse engineering). Nevertheless the Japanese still remains in the lead in this field.

In conclusion - a rewarding and satisfied week of having achieved something improvement.