Week 9/28 - 10/2
This week has been quite interesting for the R2. As mentioned last week, one of the legs kept falling off, because the threads inside of the R2 were barely existent so the screw wasn't latching on to anything. To fix this I drilled holes in both the legs and the R2 and then added heated inserts so I could get some real threads in there. This instantly fixed the problem and both legs are now completely stable. Another problem I had was that when the leg fell it knocked some of the pins loose on the PCB so those needed to be fixed. When resoldering the pins the pads that the solder sticks to fell off and it was impossible to then solder the pins. This meant I had to mill a whole new PCB which was getting quite annoying. After the PCB was finished I got to work soldering it as I wanted to finish testing the receiver portion so I could get to work on the transmitter.
Once the board was finished soldering I attached all the components, and actually put the whole PCB inside the R2 so I could get the feel for what it would be like without things hanging out. I did make the change of cutting the wires to the switch down as I think the weight of the switch was bending the pins and making it easier for the solder to break. Once the PCB was in place and all the motors were connected I plugged the battery in and flicked the switch...but it still didn't worked. This didn't appear to be a problem I have had before. The light on the Metro Mini was clearly on which meant that from the battery to the Metro Mini everything was fine. I also figured it wasn't the motors as it would be unlikely that all of them stopped working at the same time. This probably means that something with the receiver is wrong, perhaps one of the pins isn't connected properly. I was going to check, but unfortunately the bell rang and I wasn't able to take a look which will be the top priority for next week.
In other exciting shop news since the beginning of the year there has been a competition for students to take home a couple 3D printers that have been sitting in the shop since last year and aren't being used. To accumulate points students would complete chores around shop, some easy and some hard, and would get points based on those chore. The points were tracked on a website made by Andrew, one of the other shop students. The competition was ended on the last day of September with myself coming in 2nd place right behind Ben.
My points were earned from setting up the Bambu H2C printer and indicating the vises on the mills in the machine shop (both of which are in my first blog post of the year) and from helping Mr. Christy learn how to use the new 3D printers. Twice. For these efforts I get to take home a PRUSA i3 MK3 3D printer (pictured below). I want to first test the printer in the shop just to make sure I have every part needed and know how to use it before taking it home. I have been wanting to take this printer since Mr. L talked about giving it away last year except he wanted it to be fair to other students (even though nobody else asked for it last year) which meant waiting till this year and the shop's little competition.
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