Team:UCLA/Notebook/Materials/27 August 2015

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Spinning with the godet, attempt 1

• 90% v/v Isopropanol coagulation bath
• We first tried a godet speed of 15.67 steps/second
  • Yesterday, we tried to measure the speed at which the fiber comes out of the tubing and obtained ___.
• godet was way too slow. The thread drooped to the bath floor and the thread coming out of the PEEK tubing was just bunching at the bottom.
• Tried bumping the speed all the way up to 15.6719 x 14
• This cut some of the slack in the thread
  • However, I observed something strange: it seemed that the faster that the godet reeled the thread, the faster the thread came out of the tubing
  • So it never happened as we envisioned -- that the thread would be taut coming out of the PEEK tubing

Spinning with the godet, attempt 2

• I was frustrated with the godet, so I had the idea to reel the silk around something that I could spin with my hands. Used a 25 mL pipette
• I used tweezers to pick up the fiber and wind it around the pipette
• I spun the pipette slowly at first, but realized that the fiber in the bath was still slack
• I then started spinning the pipette as fast as I could -- remarkably, the fiber tolerated this, and was still slack in the bath!!

Spinning with the godet, attempt 3

• Hands getting tired. I decided to let the motors do the work.
• Set up the godet outside of the bath. See picture.

Silk spinner or shitty Rube Goldberg machine?

• Here's the weird part, the fiber ended up being kind of slack-ish?
  • The thread would drop vertically down from the PEEK tubing as it emerged
  • But before touching the floor, it would be pulled upward towards the surface
  • Right below the thread, there would be some white stuff. Not sure what it was -- water? silk stuffs? It dispersed when agitated with tweezers.
• Occasionally, the thread had imperfections (i.e. clumps)
• Regardless, we got a fair amount of thread.

seriously, a small volume of dope yields a crazy long length of thread.

• Retroactive edit: On August 28, I collected the fibers from the godet. It glows, kind of? It's near impossible to tell when placed on plastic.