Week Six
Week Six started on an exciting note. We got all of our parts from the Rapid Prototyping Center!! This meant that we could hit the ground running and finish the fabrication of our parts this week. It was quite exciting to see our designs come to life.
Next, we got a lesson about how to solder from Rich Phillips. It was very informative to everyone and allowed us all to gain some knowledge that would propel us forward on our way to finishing our experiments and get them ready for testing.
Charge/Voltage
- Got parts from the RPC!!!
- Sanded and manipulated the parts so that everything fits together
- Tested out the circuit at room temperature... and it worked!!
- Practiced soldering and will get the circuit board completed soon
- Worked on figuring out the Basic Stamp
Right: The design in SolidWorks for the breakdown voltage experiment and then the actual part that was made be the Rapid Prototyping Center.
Solar
- Got parts from the RPC!!!
- Put parts together and figured out the basic design
- Worked on soldering and testing the solar panels
- Learned that the solar panels were ridiculously fragile
- Hopefully design will be completely put together and working by next week
- Looked into memory stick adapters for saving data in the payload
Mercury
- Got parts from the RPC!!!
- Worked on getting the parts to fit together properly
- Researched the use of resistors as a heating element to keep the gold traps above ambient temperature
- Next step is to test the experiment in the bell jar and measure pressures coming into the device
This week has been a very productive week for the teams. We are moving along with our fabrication and should be well into testing during next week. We also plan to have "Basic Stamp Parties" so that we can learn about the Basic Stamp and how we can utilize it for out experiments
We are moving forward and looking forward to our launch!!!
- Rebecca McAuliffe
