Hi Tyler, 

I think you have a great project idea. 3D printing is always difficult especially for small object. As you said it sometimes leave little ridges all over the surface. I 3D print a decent amount for different project for my mechanical engineering degree. The best way to have a great 3D print is usually in the precision of your CAD file. It could also be how the 3D printing is done. The 3D printer my program has can print multiple designs at the same time. Often when too many design are printed the quality decreases. That could maybe help on the reprinting you had to do. For the servos, I can recommand you a stronger servo. I used it for a robot that was picking up boxes with arm. The original servos I had where not strong enough and I went with that one and it worked a lot better. 

Here is the link:

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/bms-630mg-super-strong-servo-13kg-17sec-49g.html?___store=en_us

Hey Will, thanks for the comments!

Provides wonderful ideas on how not to be a productivity ninja ... and still have a life.

Thanks a lot Jon for your time in my presentation and taking some wonderful pictures :)

Wow, it is wonderful. Jon, do you have the source photo of Miao-Han's presentation?

Click to see full size file....

(nb. only available to members of the SCIS group)

Hi Zakaria! Good advice. There is a lot to read through, and taking your time through each step seems to be the right way to go.  I'm officially starting the course in August, but I thought I come scan the requirements ahead of time.

I'm also predicting difficulties with keeping a journal. This will be my first time doing so, and the task seems daunting. I, like you, will keep it simple.

Good luck with the course!

To quote someone whose name I don't recall, "Grading takes the fun out of failing."

What a wonderful quote! I had to look it up - it was Shimon Schocken, in a TED talk about his very cool bottom-up hands-on failure-driven self-guided approaches to learning: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7YRHxwoDs 

The whole thing is worth watching, but I love this bit at about 10 minutes in:

"I'd like to say a few words about traditional college grading. I'm sick of it. We are obsessed with grades because we are obsessed with data, and yet grading takes away all the fun from failing, and a huge part of education is about failing. Courage, according to Churchill, is the ability to go from one defeat to another without losing enthusiasm. And [Joyce] said that mistakes are the portals of discovery. And yet we don't tolerate mistakes, and we worship grades. So we collect your B pluses and your A minuses and we aggregate them into a number like 3.4, which is stamped on your forehead and sums up who you are. Well, in my opinion, we went too far with this nonsense, and grading became degrading."