Misc Updates

Well this one is not as formal as the rest of my meeting posts but here are some the of the Misc things that have been worked on between all these gaps.

LED budget display

after finding a youtube video of a R2D2 Builders Group member using a led belt buckle when designing his logical displays i decided to copy his idea from the front logic displays.  This takes away one less thing to worry about when doing the electrical components and programming later on.

3D Printed Parts

A lot of work has been done.  Between July and August all the C.A.D models have been finished and all that remains is the printing process.  We are able to print off one part every 3 days or so so this might take awhile.  so far we have the coin slots, side vents and pocket vents printed off (as well as the CPU arms from earlier)

Paint

While no painting has been done yet, we did some paint testing using plastic cups (thanks to the people on R2D2 Builders Group for the suggestions) and decided to use Eastwood Almost Chrome for our silver/grey colors on the dome and for our blue we are using Dupli-Color Sonic Blue Pearl BFM0378.

In the mean time i have been helping out teaching some more S.T.E.M classes involving soldering/programing and some good old Lego Mindstorms.  Speaking of Lego Mindstorms, as the F.I.R.S.T First Technical Challenge comes along this year i might be a little busy being a mentor for a local highschool.

~Jacob

Meeting #8
August 31st 2013
Duration: 30 Minutes
Attendance: Jacob, Nate

It was the start of the school year, i had multiple friends ask me to join this project over the summer.  I though why not have an introductory meeting for all those wanting to join, try to catch them up to speed on why i am doing this project and what has been done and what still needs to be done.  After a day of planning, writing everything up, and 2 hours of pre-meeting set up....Only my good friend Nate shows up who already knows what is going on.  So much for that idea.

Anyways i will post my Gant Chart as well as a few other project statements here shortly for reference.


Note: August was a very layed back month in terms of the project for me.  I spent the month taking a class at the university as well as teaching some S.T.E.M classes each week to local middle school and high school students.  Needless to say they all loved R2D2.

~Jacob

Meeting #7
07/27-28/2013
Duration: 180 Minutes each day
Attendance: Jacob, Nate

During this meeting we finished up the rockler bearing that we started two weeks ago.  After finally getting our Teflon spray and we once again cleaned out the bearing, sprayed on a coat of Teflon and put the bearing back together. During this process we took advantage of the bearing being apart and we marked/drilled/countersunk the necessary holes in the frame as well as the bearing.  That Sunday the 28th we went to our local hardware store to pick up the washers, bolts and nuts needed to mount our bearing.  After a dumb oversight of getting the wrong heads on the bolts by myself, we finally got everything mounted.  The bearing was much more quiet and spun more freely making close to a full revolution before coming to a stop.

~Jacob

*pictures to come soon*

Glued Together

Meeting #6
July 20th 2013
Duration: 300-420 Minutes
Attendance: Jacob

After

After having the frame for a long period of time, I finally came to the conclusion that it was finally time to glue all the pieces together.  This was a much bigger project that i had first anticipated.  Taking well over 4-5 hours to take apart and reassemble and glue each piece took quiet some time.  especially since i made sure no glue was showing at the end and constantly cleaning up little mistakes.  I wish i could say everything went according to plan but later on i found out i glued a piece in at a small angle which would prevent me from skining R2 later on.  I put this issue off for now and just called it a day.  I will use a heat gun to remelt the glue and re-position the piece later.

~Jacob

*Pictures to come soon*

Quick Update

I apologize for not having updated my progress in awhile.  With class starting I have been very busy and have very little time to physically build anything.  A bunch of progress has been made however in the creature of our C.A.D parts along with printing them out on Marquette's 3D printer.  More pictures and updates will come soon, as well as some recaps of meetings that went on from July-August.

~Jacob

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