We have some news which basically assures that our bouldering wall is going to be built and is going to be great! We had a meeting with some of the Student Government people, and they essentially promised us a fair amount of money for our project. They also suggested we go to President Berkey for additional funds so we'd be able to fill the Squash court. A few days later, we met with him and he offered to match what SGA is offering! We're pretty much set now, we just have to do the final tasks leading up to construction: Buying the holds, acquiring keys for the room, writing our IQP paper and so on.
Our wall will be up over the summer and should be fully operational by A-term 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Location!
Hello, we have received some pretty excellent news recently - We have permission to use one of the Squash courts in the gym for the location of our bouldering wall! A few weeks ago, we sent an email to many staff members asking how we could get permission to use the room we'd been fighting for, a storage room on the third floor of Olin. As you know, getting permission for this room has been a difficult battle because nobody seems to have the authority to give us the go-ahead. Anyway, instead of giving us permission for that, we got approval for a totally different, much larger and more accessible room. We are all quite excited about this!
Also, D-Term has just started, so we're figuring out meeting times and the like.
Also, D-Term has just started, so we're figuring out meeting times and the like.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Room Tour
Last week, our meeting took the form of a tour around the room we want to build our wall in. We had an employee of RockWerx with us, and we showed him the room so he could have a better idea of the engineering required and to give us more information about how they'd do things. He was excited about the project and didn't foresee any real problems as far as construction would go.
The meeting helped assure us that the room made sense as a place to put our wall and that RockWerx was a good company to trust with building it.
As the term goes on, getting permission to use the room continues to be our last major hurdle.
The meeting helped assure us that the room made sense as a place to put our wall and that RockWerx was a good company to trust with building it.
As the term goes on, getting permission to use the room continues to be our last major hurdle.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Tech Wall - Building Holds
When we first started this project, we had the idea of building our own holds to reduce costs and so we could easily acquire transparent ones. As the project got further along, the Tech Wall became a secondary project - plus the Adopt-A-Hold project was an excellent fund-raising tool. Now that we've got some more time on our hands, we're once again thinking about the construction of the Tech Wall.
Building climbing holds is not trivial, of course, but it seems like something we could do at least in small quantities. We've done some research and some begging, and hold companies don't want to give us transparent holds (at least not for cheap!) Our first step for this will be, of course, acquiring the materials. There are a few different ways to make them, we'll probably use a resin/sand combination which is popular among hobbyists.
The project will probably go something like this:
1. Make a mold out of clay using a real climbing hold.
2. Make the resin/sand mixture.
3. Pour that into the mold.
4. Wait for it to harden.
5. Realize we screwed up step 2, do steps 2-4 again.
6. We have a hold! Now we experiment with making our own hold shapes/designs and figuring out how to make it more transparent (this sand thing could make it difficult)
Building climbing holds is not trivial, of course, but it seems like something we could do at least in small quantities. We've done some research and some begging, and hold companies don't want to give us transparent holds (at least not for cheap!) Our first step for this will be, of course, acquiring the materials. There are a few different ways to make them, we'll probably use a resin/sand combination which is popular among hobbyists.
The project will probably go something like this:
1. Make a mold out of clay using a real climbing hold.
2. Make the resin/sand mixture.
3. Pour that into the mold.
4. Wait for it to harden.
5. Realize we screwed up step 2, do steps 2-4 again.
6. We have a hold! Now we experiment with making our own hold shapes/designs and figuring out how to make it more transparent (this sand thing could make it difficult)
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Update and Media
C Term has begun and we've been setting goals, meeting with people and making progress. We've taken some pictures of the Adopt-a-Hold fund raiser we did last term, and we took a picture of the team for press purposes. Speaking of which, there was an article written about us and our project in the Towers. We hope that having publicity and awareness about our project on campus will make people more excited and determined to help see our project through!
One of our two posters for the fund raiser:
A hold engraved by Sanado with the WPI seal and type:
The team:
One of our two posters for the fund raiser:
A hold engraved by Sanado with the WPI seal and type:
The team:
Monday, December 7, 2009
B-term winding down
Hello again. As we near the end of B-term, we've started looking hard at how to get the funds we need to build this wall. The hope of having the wall up by the end of C-term has slipped away, but it seems likely that we can have it built over the summer. We've made some progress getting approval, though it seems like every person we talk to tells us to talk to someone else as well.
Lately, the group has been working on and commenting on a few different documents: An article about us in the school paper, a letter to Alumni requesting funding, and a letter to various companies requesting support. We wanted to give every group member a chance to give input on these documents, so we've decided to use Google Wave to write/edit them. So far, it's proved to be significantly more useful than email for this sort of thing.
That's about it for now, look for our article soon in The Towers.
Lately, the group has been working on and commenting on a few different documents: An article about us in the school paper, a letter to Alumni requesting funding, and a letter to various companies requesting support. We wanted to give every group member a chance to give input on these documents, so we've decided to use Google Wave to write/edit them. So far, it's proved to be significantly more useful than email for this sort of thing.
That's about it for now, look for our article soon in The Towers.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Status update
Hello all. There have been some interesting developments lately.
Contracts/Liability/Money
WPI does not want us to build the wall ourselves; they instead want us to give plans to the official WPI contractor who will build it with his team. We've talked to the contractor, and it does not seem realistic that he could build it within our budget constraints. In light of this, we've contacted RockWerx, the construction company that built Central Rock and MetroRock. Their prices are significantly more reasonable, and the hope is that we could have them do the construction.
Tech Wall
We never quite had the heart to give up on our high-tech bouldering wall idea. Instead of trying to integrate electronics into the wall we're building on campus, we've decided to build a prototype for the tech wall elsewhere. Because it's unlikely that we will be doing the construction work for the on-campus wall ourselves, we will have time to create this prototype high-tech wall.
We would like to prove that our concept is scalable, so our current design is to build two independent modules. Each module will be a 4x10 wall, with a light and sensor in every grid space. The electronics will be modular as well, so that more wall-pieces could be added on with minimal extra effort. Our proof of concept will be an 8x10 wall with adjustable angle for each of the two 4x10 wall-pieces.
We have some sketches and more design ideas, they will be up soon.
Contracts/Liability/Money
WPI does not want us to build the wall ourselves; they instead want us to give plans to the official WPI contractor who will build it with his team. We've talked to the contractor, and it does not seem realistic that he could build it within our budget constraints. In light of this, we've contacted RockWerx, the construction company that built Central Rock and MetroRock. Their prices are significantly more reasonable, and the hope is that we could have them do the construction.
Tech Wall
We never quite had the heart to give up on our high-tech bouldering wall idea. Instead of trying to integrate electronics into the wall we're building on campus, we've decided to build a prototype for the tech wall elsewhere. Because it's unlikely that we will be doing the construction work for the on-campus wall ourselves, we will have time to create this prototype high-tech wall.
We would like to prove that our concept is scalable, so our current design is to build two independent modules. Each module will be a 4x10 wall, with a light and sensor in every grid space. The electronics will be modular as well, so that more wall-pieces could be added on with minimal extra effort. Our proof of concept will be an 8x10 wall with adjustable angle for each of the two 4x10 wall-pieces.
We have some sketches and more design ideas, they will be up soon.
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