It was a busy week in the shop. Our students are working on all sorts of projects, and several of our Juniors were able to meet the shop Advisory Board on Thursday evening. It’s a great opportunity to hear what industry professionals think about the work being done in the shop. Thank you for all who were able to attend.
This week Senior Bella Hallahan worked on several projects:
This week and last week I got a bunch of stuff done. Last week, The construction shop teacher, Mr. D’Alleva came to our shop with a cornhole set. He wanted us to add something to it for Mr. Cormio, the Electrical shop teacher who’s retiring this year. I volunteered to design it for him. Most of my time last week was coming up with design to put on the cornhole set. I was able to do a test engraving of the design on a small piece of wood and then I ran it by Mr. D’Alleva before I engraved the actual cornhole set. I was able to get the actual thing engraved and gave it back to Mr. D’Alleva so that he could finish i up with some epoxy or something.
At the same time, I was also working towards the word clock and my canvas stand. I had finished making all the inkscpae files for my canvas stand and I cut out two of the layers. I took those two layers home just to be sure that the measurements were correct. As for the word clock, Mr. L told me that the L-brackets I 3D printed probably weren’t strong enough to hold the word clock up well. So, I redesigned them and got them 3D printed. Jaspreet and I screwed two of the new brackets into the backplate.
At the beginning of this week, Kim and I went ahead to try and screw the rest of the new brackets into the frame of the word clock. We got three of them in, but we couldn’t get the last one in because the metal power bars were in the way and we would’ve had to take them out, screw the bracket in, and then put the power bars back in, which wouldv’e just messed up the placement of them. Instead, we decided I’d just redesign the one bracket that doesn’t fit.
Last week, when I gave the Cornhole for Mr. Cormio back to Mr. D’Alleva, he thought it would be nice if I engraved sets for the other teachers retiring as well. There are four other teachers retiring, but since the design for Mr. Cormio’s set took so long, he told me to just do something simple like the logo. Since there are four teachers, there were eight boards for me to engrave. Tuesday – Friday this week, I’ve come to school early so that I could engrave one of them because they take a long time and no one else would be able to use the lasercutter. I’ve also been cutting one during the time that we’re at lunch. By doing this, I was able to get seven out of the eight boards engraved. I only have one more left and then I can give them back to Mr. D’alleva.
I also finished up my canvas stand on Thursday this week and took it home. I made the whole thing out of acrylic because the pieces of wood that we had were too small for my design. I think I like the acrylic better anyways.
See more of Bella’s work here.
Junior Tim Hunt is finishing the pressure vessel for the new ROV:
This week I was getting back into the swing of things with the tube. I realized on Monday that I had left the tube majorly out of alignment.
I also realized that the soft jaws I had made for the tube were too soft. They had squished under the uneven pressure of the chuck’s jaws’ clamping force. so I made new low profile versions of the soft jaws.
the new low profile jaws are a lot simpler, just consisting of a slightly rounded plate. I used the stock for the end caps in the vise as an anvil to shape the jaws to be the right diameter.
then I spent another entire day aligning the tube.
after that I re-set the DRO using the dial indicator. then I started to thin out the flange at the end of the tube from 3/4 in to half an inch. I made sure to leave material for the filet.
I really didn’t want to have to take the time to grind a form tool to turn the filet, and we don’t have a holder for button inserts or button inserts, so I used a life hack. I put an 1/8 in ball endmill in a number 8 collet, then I put that collet in the large boring bar holder. I then used this as a form tool to turn the filet on the flange.
although this worked rather well, I had to dramatically reduce the RPM and reverse the spindle. I also had to manually feed, avoiding turning the entire diameter of the endmill at once to prevent chatter and possible misalignment.
during the week I worked with Adam to figure out the CNC for the end caps. we decided to not add the perpetrator holes yet to ensure that all the cables work before permanently deciding on the diameter of each hole. I also helped adam switch out the vise in the CNC mill to the larger one one the manual mill. I realized that we didn’t have to fully indicate it in because the circular end cap is the only part machined and all of the features that aren’t fully circularly symmetrical are machined in the same setup.
Our Sophomores are beginning the Sumobot project, and Adam Dangi reports on his progress so far:
This week, I progressed on my sumo bot project.
Monday: Today, I worked on setting up my breadboard and getting the line sensor for the breadboard. By attaching a motor to certain pins of a DRV8833 motor control and attaching power to VIN and GND to ground, we are able to control the direction of the motor and the way it turns(clockwise and counterclockwise).
Tuesday: I worked on the code that would control my motors. I remembered an idea I used for the light box project in its early stages. As you might recall, it was a “void rainbow.” So I thought to myself, could that be applied to other aspects of scripting? Answer? Yes. Switching the name of the loop in “void loop” makes a separate function that is separate from the void loop.
Wednesday: Today, I worked on fixing my line sensor. Around halfway through the class period, I learned that while my code was reading AnalogRead, I had a digital sensor, a common mistake, as both look very similar. So by getting an Analog one, the line sensor was more accurate and worked better(and I was in luck, as it was the only one left).
Thursday: I was out today, got sick.
Friday: Today, I will continue my work on my motors, working to make them so that they will be completely automated to make decisions for themselves.
The Freshmen took their first steps into the machine shop and began making thread checkers. They learned about thread sizes, taps and dies, and basic hand tools.
All for now.
MVTHS Engineering 
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