Meeting Five
Attendance: Jacob, Nate
Time: 120 Minutes

we started off this meeting by looking over some CAD parts that we had been working on.  We then started on what was to be the main focus of this meeting, to finish up the Rockler bearing.  we had just cleaned out the excess grease during the last meeting.  We decided to use WD40 as a lubricant and place the bears back in the metal rings.  While this did improve the amount of "spin" that the bearing achieved it was painfully noisy.  we gave in an ordered the acetal bearings and got ahold of a can of the teflon spray needed.  we also marked out exactly what needs to be drilled next week on the drill press.

We then decided to move onto the electrical components of R2D2.  Previously Jacob came up with a printed circuit board in order to control an 8x8 led matrix.  This was done to get some practice before creating the 5x8 matrices that are used for the small logic displays.  Jacob gave a short tutorial to Nate on how to solder and the printed circuit board was completed

an hour later.



After this was done Jacob ran across a youtube video of a budget way of controlling the lighting in the small logic displays.


~Jacob

Other Small Projects

I was recently given a box of old electronic components (its like giving candy to a kid).  With all the endless possibilities to go through i stumbled across some old disposable cameras, and what better to do with old disposable cameras than to make...... A taser!

A simple concept of being able to charge up the capacitor on the board around redirecting the current away from the flash mechanism.  However unlike most taser projects online i made mine a little more unique and user friendly.  by keeping the flash component of the camera on the board and adding in a toggle switch i can choose to quickly discharge the taser and creating a blinding flash.  It was a short lived project and probably only got two days of use before it was thrown back into the electronics box, but what a great two days it was.

~Jacob

Meeting #4
July 6th 2013
Duration: 150 Minutes
Attendance: Jacob, Nate

Jacob and Nate got together to go over what we have discovered about led matrices.  We figured out what we would need and designed a printed circuit board and gathered all the components in order to create one of the small logic displays.  After this we took apart our Rockler Lazy Susan bearing, cleaned out all the grease and prepared it for drilling to start the process of getting the dome mounted. Looking back on this i really should have worn gloves... At the end of the meeting the 1:1 scale blueprints for R2D2's legs were sent off to the poster printer to have a scale blueprint to trace out instead of redrawing them out.

~Jacob

Two halves of Rockler bearing

Rockler after being cleaned and polished

Meeting #3
June 30th 2013
Duration: 90 minutes
Attendance: Jacob, Nate

Jacob and Nate met up in the DLC in order to gather electrical components and to start brainstorming ideas for the logic displays.  after gathering breadboards, led matrix displays and many other fun electronics we got our hands on an arduino uno and starting self teaching ourselves how to create led matrix displays.

Timeline of Events

Timeline of events pre-blog

September-October 2012
Much talk of this project had been taking place between Jacob, Bob and Nate however no actions were put into place until the beginning of October when our journey began.


First Meeting: October 2nd-3rd 2012
Attendance: Jacob, Bob
Time: 90 Minutes each day
Objective: Sand/clean up wood and Dry Fit

The first part of the R2D2 has come in, during this meeting we unboxed and dry assembled the frame for the first time.  the next day we sanded down each part to get a smooth fit and kept the frame assemble in our project locker.  We were missing a piece to our back door and we received a replacement part 3 months later.

Un-assembled parts

 

"Second Meeting" October 2012-May 2013

Attendance: N/A

Time: N/A

Objective: Fit in any work possible during classes as engineers!

As classes became more challenging our project was put on a temporary freeze.  during this time Jacob gathered supplies and materials but no formal meetings had occurred.  A lot of individual work was done during this time frame designing over 50 different CAD Parts for later use thanks to Jacob and Nate.

First 3d Printed Part - Utility Arms

Using UGS NX7.5 we used the blueprints from the yahoo builders group to create a CAD model of the utility arms and print them out at Marquette's Engineering workshop or the DLC (Discovery Learning Center)

Utility Arms Printed in ABS

Vacuum Formed Skirt

Using the Blueprints on the yahoo builders group we created a styrene mold in our schools vacuum mold machine.

2 Pittman Motors We picked up on Astromech.net 

Jacob Bought These off a fellow member on the astromech forums, the one that currently has a mounting plate and a belt wheel will be used to drive the dome.

A&A Gear Set we ordered

Jacob Bought a A&A Plastic Gear set to go along with the Rockler Lazy Susan bearing that was purchased.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Welcome to Marquette University's R2D2 project.  On this site we will keep track of the progress made on this project for future reference.  While a lot of things have been done over the past year by Jacob Osborne, before this blog has been created this will be maintained by the entirely of our group of college students.


~Jacob Osborne