This week marked the finish of our 8th CTE Freshmen rotation. This year there will be 15 rotations in total, allowing nearly 240 students to experience our shop before choosing a CTE program.
Here is a quick rundown of current projects happening in the shop.
Linus
This week, I brought in led strips to cut and solder for a room at my house. I had to design a holder for the leds to keep it in the right place with they right angles. I failed a couple times and had to trim down a few inches but I have it all working and set up now.
Phil
I’ve implemented the most basic form of scoring with the timing on the circles. The button gets pressed then one point will be added to your score if you match the circles correctly. The timing of the button has made things difficult because the code checks if the pin (that is connected to the button) has power to it, then it will check if the circles are matched, but when the button is physically pressed, it considers every microsecond a plus one point. Therefore it is incredible difficult to get only one point with this system. I have looked into Millis, a timer used for code that will allow a delay to the button and only the button. Then the scoring code will be fine and I will move on to other problems like, the score on the display randomly shifting right, and add a punishment for hitting the button to early before the circles match (the circle will disappear and you will not gain any points). That is all for this week thanks for reading.
Nico
More images found at Nico’s website – click here to access.
The coil gun, the project within a project, with a project in it. It has technically been the major milestone I’ve been working towards since I started the project, the first instance of control over electromagnets to perform a function. The coil gun, incomplete, just two coils of copper wire around a PVC pipe, given up on. This is due to how dangerous the circuitry actually is on a second look, actually preparing to make it.
The coil gun circuitry is so dangerous because of the live high voltage and current ran into powerful capacitors, and the high voltage and current running through the system at all times. Though I believe I am capable of the project, it is too dangerous for a school setting where not everyone here is as aware of how safe or unsafe the project is. The shop also does not have the capacitors, 400V 3300μ, for the system, and they would have to be ordered.
Despite the decision to abandon the project, which was made at the end of the week, a lot of work got done on it. First the coil winder is done and is making incredible coils comparatively with hand winding. I also changed the technique used in between each layer of coil, which stops small errors in each layer from affecting the next.
MVTHS Engineering 