Our projects are about integrating “functional” materials into larger structures, without damaging the material or the structure. Some examples of functions we want the materials to have are exerting forces, absorbing specific wavelengths, or turning a mechanical stress into an electronic signal. That won’t happen if we melted the material during installation (a real danger when sealing gold nanoparticles into a polymer structure) or if the material destroys the structure that holds on to it. Brian needed to make sure his actuators could output useful forces without melting the plastic of a 3D printed robot body. Thanks to our neighbors at FirstBuild, he was able to check on the temperature of the actuators he made using their thermal imaging camera. After that, he went ahead and made sure the grad students were in good shape.
