Looking back on the project, there are a few things that I’ve learned. It turns out that I really enjoy working with clay. It is soothing and relaxing, and being able to see something take shape in 3D is exciting. I also gained a lot more experience with 3D printing, especially with trouble-shooting.

I really want to make a working stirling engine still, so the future of my project revolves around finding out why my engine won’t work. Once I have more disposable income, I might try to make one with better materials, but not until I get my current one working first.

I wish that I had put more time into making the engine earlier on, in order to have more time to trouble-shoot it. It would have been neat to have it working for the expo.

At the expo, people seemed to really like my whale. And I’m glad, because that was what I was the most pleased about too. It’s possible that seeing something so artistically driven at an expo full of engineering projects might have been refreshing for some. Plenty of other projects definitely had artistic qualities, but were mostly engineering projects at heart. Mine, on the other hand, ended up being an artistic sculpture with the engineering component pushed aside.