I’ve posted a profile of the various projects that I’ve worked on over the past few years on the web, mainly for graduate school applications, but also for the enjoyment of anyone who wants to know more about what I’ve been up to. There are four main categories: Design, Robotics, Programming, and a miscellaneous section. Each section has a few projects and each project has a short description.

Aside from the projects, the title image on the front page is an up-to-date indication of the current weather conditions here in Boston, including the current temperature in white.

At the time when I grew up in the quiet town of York, Pennsylvania, the manufacturing industry still employed a large share of the area’s workers, but the once premiere industry now suffers steady decline. By the time I headed off to college I had been in contact with enough disgruntled, jobless production line workers to last a lifetime and I knew this trend would continue. York is not alone. All over the country manufacturing jobs are disappearing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1950 the manufacturing industry contributed close to a third of the gross domestic product in the US, but today this number is quickly falling past ten percent, being replaced by the service industry.

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In 2.00B “Solving Real Problems,” we are working towards helping out the Massachusetts based Food Project to build a new composter for one of their sites located in Dorchester, MA. For more information on the project and other project for 2.00B, visit the course website.

Background and description:

The Food Project is a nationally recognized youth development organization that manages 2 acres of urban and suburban farms in and around the city of Boston. The organization’s mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. On their four sites in Dorchester and Roxbury, they grow 15,000lbs of vegetables each year that are sold at a local low-income farmer’s market and donated to Rosie’s Place and Community Servings.

The Food Project needs to increase the amount of compost that they produce on their land, to improve the quality of their vegetables and minimize lead-contamination issues common in urban settings. The organization receives donations of compost from the city, but they do not receive enough, and this compost is not as high quality as the compost they make themselves.

The Food Project produces a lot of organic waste in the form of unusable vegetable matter (stalks, roots, cracked and damaged vegetables that cannot be sold or donated. They also pick up 2-4 trash barrels of food waste each week from Haley House Café, a neighborhood bakery, which they incorporate into the compost piles.

The Food Project would like help developing a composting system that would break down materials more quickly. A better composting system would save $1000/year and allow them to produce higher quality vegetables for the neighborhood shelters they serve.

Parameters:

• The site is not fenced. They don’t have a lot of problems with vandalism and leave things like crates and other materials out in the open, but whatever is built should be durable and safe.
• They don’t have an electrical power source on the land.
• Labor is another issue. During the summer months, they have a large number of volunteers working with them throughout the week. In other seasons, we have less help and turning the compost piles takes a lot of time! Any systems that could minimize this activity would be beneficial
• The system should not require a lot of space
• The system should minimize the smell of the composting material, as their neighbors have started to voice concerns about smells from the compost pile since they began picking up food waste from Haley House

An initial design for the composter:

Click an image to see a larger version!

High in Carbon
Hay, Corn Stalks, Straw, Corn Silage, Fall Leaves, Sawdust, Brush, Wood
Chips, Bark, Newspaper, Cardboard, Mixed Paper

High in Nitrogen
Dairy Manure, Poultry Manure, Hog Manure, Cull Potatoes, Vegetable
Waste, Coffee Grounds, Grass Clippings, Sewage Sludge

I’ve added a SolidWorks model (for those who have the software) of the recycling logo to my public directory. This might be helpful for designing T-shirts, but probably not as helpful in designing any prototypes for “Solving Real Problems.” The logo can be found here.