Aaron BenDaniel's Blog

About Me

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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My name is Aaron BenDaniel, and I am a sophomore (class of 2029) at Syracuse University studying mechanical engineering.

I attended the Medford Vocational Technical High School in Medford, Massachusetts. I was in the Robotics & Engineering vocational shop and was a member of the Medford Robotics Team, Sunk Robotics. Sunk Robotics is a three-time international competitor in the MATE ROV Competition.

I am interested in general engineering, CAD, PCB Design, CNC milling, and manufacturing.

I have experience in parametric 3D modeling, PCB design, and Computer Aided Machining with Fusion 360, as well as Arduino, Python, C, and general electrical design.

I have experience with Tormach CNC mills, OMAX water jet cutters, Techno CNC routers, Techno plasma cutters, manual mills, manual lathes, Epilog laser engravers, Formlabs resin printers, and FDM printers.

Starting the assembly of 'Cuse Baja's CB04

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Writing on 2026-01-28, but everything mentioned here happened on 2026-01-23.

This past Friday, I along with the rest of the ‘Cuse Baja chassis subteam started assembly of the frame for CB04, the brand new car for the team.

I have previously helped with measuring, cutting, and notching the tubes that make up the frame, but I was not able to help with the welding processes as I have not yet been taught how to weld.

I helped to move parts between the welding room and the main shop, prep tubes for welding, and set parts in the welding fixture.

There will most certainly be more of this in the future, as the roll cage is only one part of the frame and there is still quite a lot left to weld.

First blog post post-high-school 👀

Senior Week 33

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is my last blog post of my high school career, potentially ever. I’d like to think that I’ll continue this website in college, but I suppose only time will tell.

I decided to engrave my name and the shop’s logo onto my eccentric staircase. I think it looks good, and now everyone will know that I made it.

Mr. L was talking with Ben and I, and he mentioned that Autodesk will soon(ish) drop Fusion360’s support for Windows 10. Unfortunately, this means that the shop will be forced to upgrade all of our computers from Win10 to Win11.

This means that we’ll need a new shop image. Ben and I decided to make one and attempt to de-bloat Win11 as best we can.

The big thing that happened this week was the Sophomores’ Sumo Bot Contest. I’m a bit disappointed that the robot that ended up winning didn’t even work as intended, but overall there was a good showing for this year.

The end of my time in the Robotics & Engineering shop meant that I needed to clean out my box. One of the more major things I still had in there was my Micromouse. I’m still disappointed that I didn’t really end up finishing it, but at the same time I don’t regret stopping to work on machine shop projects. I left my maze and the robot I built in the shop so that if someone else ever wants to continue it, they’ll have everything I’ve built available to them.

Senior Week 32

Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I finally made some real progress on the eccentric staircase! Unfortunately, the disks are larger than I would have liked, but it can’t be helped.

I started turning my second attempt in brass, and although brass is easier to machine and the part was smaller, the parting blade was still visibly bending and I felt that it would break sooner or later.

I ended up switching to the carbide insert parting blade. This tool is significantly more rigid and experienced zero bend when I used it. Unfortunately, it is quite a bit shorter than the HSS parting blade and because of this, I needed to bring in the stock and make my eccentric staircase less eccentric. This resulted in larger disks, which I’m not too thrilled with, but I don’t see any other way to make this part, so I guess I’ll need to live with it.

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Even half-finished, I still think it looks pretty cool. I think that even if the part doesn’t come out how I’d initially planned, it’ll still be an overall success.

I also helped clean a little and started taking apart some old sumo-bots. I don’t think any of the juniors or seniors are particularly attached to their sumo-bots, so Mr. Christy tasked me with disassembling them and salvaging the parts.

Senior Week 31

Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week I started a new project. I want to continue manufacturing projects, and I decided to make a desk ornament/trinket that I’d seen before.

It’s pretty simple to make, at least in theory. The trick is to put the part into the chuck offset from the center of rotation and reclamp the part at different angles to create the spiral of disks.

I’m using a Youtube video as a reference for how to make this part, and their’s came out really good.

I created a drawing and started turning the part on Tuesday.

At first I started with a part that was made out of aluminum and was 1.8 inches in diameter. Unfortunately, I believe that this is simply too large and I ended up breaking a parting blade attempting to turn this part. I very nearly broke another making a second attempt, so I decided to give up on this version.

I decided to redesign the part to be smaller and made out of brass. Brass looks better and is what is used in the video, so maybe it will be easier. The main thing I’m hoping will help is the reduced size. My second version will be both shorter and thinner.

Senior Week 30

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I spent quite a bit of time this week prepping for the MATE ROV 2025 New England Regional.

As always, there was quite a bit of important stuff that we got done last-minute, our marketing display included! We got it printed (in one day :O) on Tuesday, which was also the day we finished all the writing for it.

We applied the giant sticker on Wednesday and it came out…. fine. There are a few wrinkles, but I’m sure they’ll go unnoticed by everyone but those who applied the sticker.

We get point for having “additional marketing materials” along with our marketing display, so on Thursday I laser-cut some little keychains. They’re not the highest quality, but they’ll definitely be enough for the judges.

I finished the second-to-last part for the Band Saw Fence. This was the first of the difficult parts that require both turning and milling to make. The shank came out pretty good, although the hole on the top could have the threads go a little deeper. Unfortunately, I’d need to drill it deeper in order to do that, and I wouldn’t be confident in the strength of the part if the hole went deeper.

I started the handle and finished the turning portion as well. I discovered that the chamfer tool for the lathe is not 45 degrees on both sides, although I feel like the right side is the one with the real 45 degree angle, which doesn’t make sense. The chamfers are uneven, but I don’t know if anyone would notice without specifically studying them. I’m not too sure why they’re uneven like they are, I’d think it’d be the other way around.

The last features I need to cut on the handle will need the mill, and I’ll use the collet block in order to hold the part.

Senior Week 29

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I spent this week mostly working on Sunk Robotics’ Technical Documentation and other related documents in preparation for the upcoming MATE ROV New England Regional. Last year, Zack Bertocchi used Adobe InDesign to create our Tech Doc, but he didn’t save the design files, and none of know how to use that software. Because of this, we needed to recreate our Tech Doc from scratch and we opted to use Google Docs to do this.

I was rather skeptical at first, not believing that Google Docs was powerful enough to make something that looked good, but I was pleasantly surprised. Buried deep within submenus and internet searches, Google Docs actually has a reasonably fleshed out formatting system that has the ability to make something pretty good looking.

As part of my efforts this year to prepare the younger members of the team for Ben and my’s imminent departure (and a case of Senioritis), I’ve had them do most of the writing for this year’s doc. I’ve looked over most of it, and while I probably would have written it differently, I think it’ll be fine.

In addition to the Tech Doc, there are a number of other documents that we are required to submit prior to the competition. One of these is the Company Spec Sheet, which I was tasked with creating. I mostly followed the design of last year, but once again had to completely remake it from scratch, this time in Google Sheets.

We still need to take a Team Photo as we completely forgot that’s a thing we need, so we’ll need to take that tomorrow.

I only got a little bit of work done on the Band Saw Fence this week. I began the turning process for the Shank, although I didn’t get too far.

Senior Week 28

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I milled two more parts for the Band Saw Fence this week. This marks the completion of the clamps.

All that remains now, is also the most difficult part.

The shank and handle parts which will fit together to form the part that the user turns and compresses the pusher to clamp the Fence to the band saw table are the most complex parts of this project.

Both parts will involve both turning and milling.

In addition to my work on the Band Saw Fence, I also spent a bit of time with Mrs. Miller in the Programming and Web Development shop trying to get the Sunk Robotics website finally up and running with Bluehost, the service that Programming uses to host all of their websites. It was a real struggle to get the domain sunkrobotics.com to finally connect to the Bluehost instance, but we finally did it!

Another thing that needs to get done before the MATE ROV New England regional is getting new Sunk Robotics shirts. Our current shirts were made way back in 2022 for our trip to Long Beach, California. In addition to the outdated sponsors and logo, we simply don’t have enough shirts for everyone. All the members who have graduated have taken their shirts with them, so we needed to order additional shirts.

The shirts will feature our new logo and an updated sponsors list.

(The shade of blue is random, the white parts will be printed onto blue shirts.)

Senior Week 27

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We had Monday off, so it was a short week.

I spent the entirety of this week milling parts for the Band Saw Fence. So far, in the three days I’ve had this week, I’ve managed to mill one part per day.

The static clamp was the first part I made. It fit perfectly on the band saw table, although I ended up breaking a tap while threading its holes. Because of that, one of the holes is useless, as it’s far more effort than it’s worth to extract the broken tap, so I guess that’s just part of it now.

The top part of the moving clamp was the second part I made. It features a slot for the pusher to slide in, mounting holes to attach to the angle stock, and mounting holes to hold the three parts of the moving clamp together. The finish on the chamfer on the slot if really awful and I’m not sure why. I used the same 90° 1/4" bit that I used for the other chamfers and those came out fine. I guess super small chamfers just don’t turn out as good.

The bottom part of the moving clamp was the final part I made this week. It’s pretty similar to the top, but is mirrored and does not have the holes for attaching to the angle stock. It has the same issue with the slot chamfer.

I have four more parts to make before I can call the Band Saw Fence complete, and although two will be easy, the two parts that make up the screw and handle will be far more complicated and will require both the mill and lathe to make.

Senior Week 26

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week I started a new project: a Bandsaw Fence. I’ve finished the preliminary CAD design, which is admittedly a bit overcomplicated, but frankly this entire project is just another excuse to manufacture stuff, so I guess that’s all the better.

The idea for this project came from Mr. L, who suggested that I make a Band Saw Fence, as we definitely need one. Up until now, we’ve just been clamping a piece of angle stock to the table, which is not great and is not always parallel to the blade.

After I finished modelling, I decided to 3D print everything first in order to confirm that my design isn’t completely awful. Unfortunately, this postpones my project at least a day while I wait for the parts to finish.

The other main thing I did this week was catalog all the endmills that we got from Venca. Ben Wirz and I had already looked through this drawer, but we weren’t really remembering what we saw, only taking a cursory glance.

This time, I went through every label and added it to the spreadsheet. I didn’t look at every individual endmill, but the drawer was already mostly sorted, so I just took note of what labels were there. There’s quite and array of tooling, and I hope that robotics will be able to take (as opposed to borrowing when needed) some of the tools.

Senior Week 25

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The first three days of the week I spent milling the second ATC fork, installing it, and fixing the ATC. I needed to make two new ATC forks, so I got a chance to improve my technique for the second one. There was definitely significant room for improvement, mainly with holding the part.

On my first attempt, holding the part for the second operation deformed one of the screw holes because the wall was so thin. To remedy this, I switched up the order of operations and decided to do the holes before anything else and then bolt the part using the screw holes onto a sacrificial piece of holding stock. This new method worked much better and I successfully milled the second fork without the deformations the first one had.

I installed the new ATC forks and they worked great! However, while testing them I noticed a highly concerning issue. The ATC loaded tools from some of the pockets slightly lower than a manually loaded tool. This discrepancy in height might have been the cause of some previous milling mishaps. In order to fix this, I needed to change the height that the spindle moves down to in order to load a tool. Right now, the spindle pushes the ATC wheel down a little when grabbing a tool, but I don’t think it will be an issue. I hope.

The shop had been conversing with local company Vecna Robotics to receive various items that they no longer had a use for. Included in the whole laundry-list of items were various commercial LiDAR senors totalling ~$120,000 USD. These are extremely high-quality sensors that we have absolutely no idea how to use, so we’ll need to learn all about them in order to actually make use of them.

In addition to the LiDAR sensors, Vecna also gave us a bunch of machine tooling. There was a massive drawer array full of stuff, although we’ll have to share it with Metal Fab. There was quite the interesting assortment of items, some of which we had wanted but didn’t have. I personally was quite interested in the ball-end mills.

Senior Week 24

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The first three days of this week were spent finishing up the Bike Holder for Metal Fab. I think it turned out pretty good.

It fits the pipe perfectly and the Metal Fab teachers were quite impressed with it. We didn’t have bolts long enough for it, but Metal Fab should be able to buy some easily enough.

With the Bike Holder done, I had nothing to do. However, Ben Wirz was using the Tormach and noted how the ATC is missing a couple parts. Right now, our “12-pocket” ATC only holds 10 tools because we’re missing some parts for it. We could buy them, and while price isn’t really a concern, I looked and they were $47 each!

These parts are required to hold the tools in each ATC pocket, and while we probably could have 3D printed them, they’d most likely break and drop a tool eventually. We could easily enough mill them ourselves so that’s what I set out to do.

I did most of the CAM for it on Wednesday, and started milling the first one on Thursday. It so far looks good, but I still need to do the second setup to see if the part will actually work.

Senior Week 23

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I started working on a project from Metal Fab to make a clamp to hold some bike parts. The unique thing about this project is that it involves milling a pocket that is 3" deep. This is deeper than any of our normal tooling can reach. Luckily, we do have a tool that can reach that far. Mr. L had barely used it, so I had to learned all about it and test it out to see what its limits are.

This tool is known as a “Shearhog” and is a roughing tool specifically for aluminum.

After quite a bit of testing, I got some feeds and speed that appear to work well with the tool. I’ve got it cutting 1.2in^3 of aluminum per minute, which is quite fast. I ended up cutting through two fairly large pieces of stock finding the right settings to use, but I hope we’ll be able to make good use of this tool in the future.

Once I’d learned how to use the Shearhog, I could get started on actually manufacturing the part. I needed to start with facing down the stock to the correct size to get its size in line with what I have in CAM, and to get the sides flat and square.

The shearhog can chew through quite a lot of material and makes a big mess of the Tormach, which I needed to clean up.

I didn’t have time to do all the faces, but so far I’ve faced three of the six sides I’ll need to do.

Senior Week 22

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two or three weeks ago, the main high-pressure water line for the water jet that connected the pump to the nozzle ruptured, with a jet of water shooting out of it when in use. This was, obviously, bad, and needed to be fixed as soon as possible. Mr. Christy ordered the replacement part soon after, but it only arrived just this week.

As the person most experienced with the waterjet, and with my general interest in the maintenance procedures of our machines, I offered to help fix the waterjet.

Mr. Christy and I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday attempting to install the replacement part. We only half succeeded. The ultra-high-pressure water requires extremely delicate seals in order to remain leak-free, and we were unable to stop one end of the line from leaking. Our repair technician for the waterjet recommended replacing the block that it connects to, as all ultra-high-pressure parts are subject to high wear and are considered consumable. We will have to wait some additional time for the extra replacement part to arrive.

The other main thing I did this week was getting to work on redoing Sunk Robotics’ website. I had originally planned to selfhost a Wordpress instance using a server in the Shop, but gave up after failing to find a way to tunnel out of the school’s locked-down network (for free) without port forwarding and decided to use Hugo.

However, after speaking with Mrs. Miller, the Programming & Web Development teacher at MVTHS, I learned that the Programming shop already pays for a service called Bluehost, which supports Wordpress hosting. Mrs. Miller offered to host Sunk Robotics’ website, so I set that up this week. Unfortunately, my work is not done, as connecting the domain sunkrobotics.com to the wordpress instance hosted by bluehost requires some additional setup that I was not able to do this week.

I also started (yet another) machine shop project. Metal Fab needs a clamp to hold some metal tubing, but the one they currently have (and gave to me for reference) does not hold the tube square in the clamp, which is needed for the project they’re working on. They asked the Robotics shop to make a second clamp that would hold the tubing centered relative to the sides of the part. I took on the job of making it. I only started it on Wednesday, so I didn’t get much work done, but it looks like I’ll get to use a new type of milling tool, known as a Shearhog, so that will be interesting.

I’m going on a trip to Rutgers University, so I will not be in school on Thursday or Friday, which is why this blog post is early.

Senior Week 21

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I finally finished the Sound Bend Lathe ways cover! I’m still missing some M10 nuts, but the thing stays in (mostly) without them for now. This should hopefully keeps stuff from dirtying up the ways of the lathe, and I it looks pretty great.

I had already done the carriage end last week, but this week I made another bracket and designed and made a mounting part to attach the bracket to. Manufacturing the parts took two whole days, as our waterjet is currently broken so I had to get Metal Fab to cut the basic shapes and then I needed to manually drill all the holes. The waterjet could have cut the outline and holes in one go and done it far far faster.

I also got to test out the bearing I finished on Friday last week. I ended up finishing the bearing right at the end of the day on Friday, and had to wait until Monday to actually test it. It works fantastic and should hopefully make aligning the tool post much less annoying. I still have a second backup bearing, so I might end up making another one for the Trak Lathe, although it uses some different hardware, so I’d need to change my design a bit.

Here’s a video of it working, narrated by your’s truly.

I also spent a bit of time on Monday and Tuesday helping Mr. L with git and hugo. He didn’t have much experience with either and asked for some help while making his own blog using Hugo. He has chosen to use PaperMod, which is the same Hugo theme I use.

I also started setting up a selfhosted Wordpress instance for the Robotics Team’s website.

Senior Week 20

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Continuing my break from working on the Micromouse, I’ve decided to take up yet another lathe project.

I’ve decided to make a bearing to go inbetween the nut and tool post for our South Bend lathe (I might make another for the Trak, maybe). When aligning the tool post on the lathe, it is quite frustrating when my attempts to tighten the nut also rotate the tool post, forcing me to restart the alignment process. This bearing should hopefully allow the nut to rotate without also rotating the tool post, and should make the process of aligning the tool post much easier.

The first part of this project is a simple spacer, which was rather quick to turn. The important part is the tolerances, which I hit using a boring bar.

Because of how narrow the spacer is, I wasn’t able to securely remount it in a chuck. Fortunately, the finish from the parting blade isn’t too bad, and will work fine when facing down.

The second part of this small project is the holder for the bearing, which I will order from McMasterCarr. The notable thing about this part is that it has an interior pocket, as seen from the scribe lines on the part. What’s called a trepanning tool is needed in order to make cuts like this, but we didn’t have one.

While we probably could have bought a trepanning tool, it would have been a bit expensive, especially for a single project. However, one of the great things about lathes is that it is relatively easy to grind custom tools. As such, we instead bought some tool-blanks and I got try to grinding my own trepanning tool. I haven’t tested it yet, but it look right and I’m hopefully it will work.

Senior Week 19

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week I spent turning the parts of my Tap Follower.

On Monday I finished up threading the holder, which ironically, was the perfect situation for a tap follower.

Once the holder was done, I turned the head, which was interesting because it features a taper that I had to cut with the lathe’s compound.

The head was a pretty simply part and I finished it quite quickly. With the head done, all the main parts of the Tap Follower were complete and I could assemble it.

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Along the way, I discovered the most delightful behavior, when pulling a 0.413 inch gauge pin out from the body, it creates a good-enough seal to pull a vacuum and go *pop* when it’s released.

The final part for the Tap Follower is the spring. I had originally intended to wind my own spring, as I had been told that it wasn’t too hard. However, after a couple attempts, I didn’t really get anywhere and gave up. I will be buying a professionally made spring instead.

Despite my failures with winding my own springs, the second one I made worked… sort of. Ben got to try the tap follower out for a single thread before the spring was deformed too much and was rendered unusable. I think the springs I’m making are plastically deforming far too easily, and with springs I buy, I will be able to actually shop around for springs with suitable minimum lengths.

On Thursday, I didn’t have much to do because I needed to wait for my springs to be ordered, so I reorganized all of our resin printing stuff (while storing all the new stuff that arrived). The area underneath the resin printers is much cleaner now. I also spent quite a bit of time helping Tim thread some steel rods, and curiously, we were unable to. The die simply wouldn’t catch and I nor Mr. L could figure out why. I will probably assist Tim with cutting the threads on the lathe.

I also decided to start work on a hopefully short project from Mr. L to make some covers for the South Bend lathe’s ways. We’re going to buy some fabric bellows covers and I need to design a way to mount them on the lathe.

Senior Week 18

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week I got quite a bit of work done, but at the same time it feels like I didn’t do as much as I’d have liked. On my goal sheet, I was rather optimistic about my timeline for this project and thought I’d be able to have it completed by Friday. Suffice it to say, this will not happen. Even if I didn’t end up needing to remake the holder, there was no way I’d have been able to get everything done.

Before I write about this week’s work, I finally got a picture of the finished plaque I’d made last week. This is the plaque that will be mounted by Construction somewhere at the MMS.

Tuesday

On Tuesday I turned the threads on the body of my Tap Follower. They were not fantastic. I didn’t make a trough for me to stop threading as I was concerned about the wall thickness. Because of this, the ends of the threads are inconsistent and overall not great. However, I expect that they will still work just fine and that it’s purely cosmetic.

In addition to the threads on Tuesday, I also drilled the 1/2in hole in the body. It took quite a while, as I needed to do a “pecking” operation to avoid clogging up the drill bit with chips. This significantly slows down the process and it ended up taking me almost a whole day. I also ended up misjudging the depth of the drilling operation and ended up needing to do multiple operations because, after I finished the first one, I realized that it wasn’t deep enough and there was more material inside of the piece than I had predicted.

On the bright side, this showed firsthand one of the big advantages of using a collet chuck. Even though I took the piece out and put it back in, it was still perfectly concentric. Additionally, though it’s important to note I’m working with steel and not aluminum, there were no marks on the parts from the chuck and the surface finish was unblemished.

By the end of Tuesday, I finished the body. I think it turned out about as good as I could have expected, though it’s definitely smaller than I imagined when I was designing it in Fusion. I’m a bit concerned that it’ll be too small, but for smaller threads, which is most of what we’re making, I hope it will be enough.

Wednesday

On Wednesday I got to work on the holder, which is the part of the Tap Follower that compresses the spring and provides a method to hold the tool. The primary feature of the holder is a 3/4in circular extrusion intended to be held by a Tormach ER32 collet. Tormach collets can be held by our Tormach mills and our Trak with an adapter we have. However, we won’t be able to hold the Tap Follower in a lathe tailstock as we do not have a Tormach to Morse Taper adapter.

Luckily, I plan to make one. It won’t clamp down on the Tormach collets, so they’ll just pull out and will freely rotate, but for tools that are pushed into the taper and are fine rotating (like my Tap Follower), this adapter I plan to make will enable me to mount my Tap Follower in all of our mills and lathes.

Because the maximum outer diameter of the holder is 1.125in (changed from the drawing I made), I need stock greater than one inch in diameter. The next largest steel stock we have is 1.3in, which is too big to fit in the collet chuck. Luckily, it’s quite easy to swap between the two chucks and I learned how to do so.

Unfortunately, in the process of parting off the holder, and I’m not quite sure what happened, I was probably just going to fast or not using enough oil, there was a THUNK, which is never a good sound to hear when turning.

I immediately stopped the parting operation and inspected the part and tool. The part was fine, but the parting blade was mangled. Interestingly, the blade looked mangled UP. Which is quite weird, as the material was moving down the blade. I’m not really sure how that could have happened. I unfortunately did not take a picture of the blade before I fixed it. However, the photo above shows what it is now, after I re-ground the tip.

After my parting blade mishap, I wanted to try grinding the blade back into a suitable shape, as that is the primary advantage of solid tools like the parting blade I was using. Because I follow shop safety rules, I did not use my cellphone while grinding it, but I did take a photo of the scene after the fact and used high-tech digital photo tools to faithfully recreate the scene in HD™ detail.

After I parted my piece, I could finally drill and thread it. The drilling went pretty smoothly and I drilled out a 3/4in hole, perfect for my 3/4-10 threads! :)

Unfortunately, as I attempted to cut the threads, I noticed a peculiar problem: the tap refused the catch. After some heavy introspection and soul-searching, I determined the cause of the problem. It appeared that, despite the major diameter of 3/4 inch threads being 3/4 inch, the minor diameter needed to be less-than 3/4 inch. Huh, who’da thunk?

Your browser does not support the video tag. NOTE: THIS VIDEO WAS TAKEN BY MR. L, NOT ME.

This mistake forced me to scrap the part and start over from the beginning. The second time around went quicker, but while the turning itself might have been quicker, things still took a lot longer than expected…

As I was swapping the chucks, I did everything as-per-usual: loosen all the bolts holding the collet-chuck in, remove the collet-chuck, clean the mating faces on the lathe and three-jaw-chuck, slot the three-jaw-chuck in, and tighten the bolts. This procedure had worked for me before and I thought it was sufficient. It was not. There are some lines on the lathe and the chuck that apparently need to line up, to the surprise of both me and Mr. L.

My part didn’t look very concentric, even after just facing it, and it started going THUNK at the end of every pass after a while. I was highly concerned, especially after I thought I saw the part jumping up and down once or twice. Despite consulting the manual our lathe came with and not seeing anything about the lines, I figured I would try re-mounting the three-jaw-chuck and aligning them in hopes it would solve my concerning part-holding situation. This appeared to have fixed the issue and after the re-mount, my part was finally concentric after facing and it stopped making bad noises.

On Wednesday, Tanzy, Ben, and I moved one of the stock-holders, which opened up a gap between the small Tormach and router for us to walk through. This was sorely needed, as in order to get to the drawers on the other side of the machine shop, you’d need to walk all around the machines to get there. Now you can walk directly through this gap to get there.

Thursday

By Thursday, it was time to start drilling the hole to be tapped. This time, I would remember to NOT drill to 3/4in and instead go slightly under, to a value specified on our tapping chart (I don’t remember the exact number). Unfortunately, I spent the entire day drilling the hole and I’m not even done, as we don’t have the drill bit we need and will need to use a boring bar. In order to use a boring bar, though, we do still need to pre-drill a smaller hole.

This step took a long time. Apparently, all three of our 1/2 inch drill bits are frightfully dull and can barely drill even aluminum. Mr. L and I tried to sharpen them, but we ultimately failed. Neither of us is quite sure what’s wrong, and YouTube videos demonstrating our model of drill bit sharpener do not reveal any problems in our method. I ended up using a 1/2 inch drill bit from Mr. L’s secret stash to drill my hole, which finally worked and cut without problem.

Senior Week 17

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m taking a break from my Micromouse project because I’d been getting quite frusrated with my lack of progress and am instead doing some manufacturing, which is a much-needed change of pace.

On Monday I did a little Micromouse work (but as usual, ultimately accomplished nothing) before commiting to my manufacturing side project(s).

On Tuesday I made a part for Mr. L on the lathe.

On Wednesday I started planning my new project: A tap-follower. A tap-follower is a tool used make the process of using a tapping tool easier by applying pressue and keeping it centered. Making sure threads are straight and centered is vitally important, and it can be quite a challenge to do by hand. A tap-follower is used in a mill or lathe to help make sure the tap is aligned properly and applies some pressue to help get it started in the material.

I created the drawings for it on Wednesday. The tool will have four parts in total, including the spring.

On Thursday I started turning the body of the tap-follower. It will require two setups and hopefully the shop’s new collet-chuck will help keep my parts concentric between setups.

Senior Week 16

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Technically last week was the first week back from winter break, but it was only two days. This is the first full week back from winter break. I did three main things this week.

The first was that I finished the project Mr. L gave to me a while ago, that was stuck waiting for approval from the people who requested it from Mr. L. It’s a plaque that’ll go… somewhere… at the McGlynn Middle School. I water-jet cut the piece and then laser-engraved the text.

Ben Wirz is working on a project that involves a lot of milling, and he asked for my help with using our Tormach PCNC1100 CNC Mill. We wanted to try machining the part using the 4th axis, as it would reduce the number of setups and hopefully increase dimensional accuracy. Suffice it to say, it did not. Unfortunately it appears that our 4th axis has some weird issues (or we’re just using it wrong) and rotating the part throws the Z axis all off. The part we took a video of has a skirt of metal around it that isn’t supposed to be there. We ended up just doing it without the 4th axis and it finally came out correct.

Finally, I continued the frustrating task of attempting to make my Micromouse not drive into walls. My idea of the week is active angle correction based on the Time of Flight sensors. This is what a lot of other Micromice do, but it’s so far been a challenge implementing it. In addition to actually implementing the adaptive movement, I needed to rewrite my motor driving code to be non-blocking. Before, I was creating a PWM signal using delays, but I’ve rewritten everything to use the ESP32 LEDC API, which uses hardware timers and interrupts to allow PWM signals to be generated in a non-blocking manner. Unfortunately, the different motor control method means I need to re-tune most of the movement stuff, which is a real pain.

Senior Week 15

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I honestly didn’t get much done this week. I’ve spent pretty much the entire week trying (and failing) a bunch of different methods to get my Micromouse to drive straight. Everything about the robot works, except for the fact that drives just the tiniest bit off-axis, which causes it to crash into the walls of the maze. I’ve tried almost everything I can think of to get it to stay parallel to the walls, and had some moderate success. Unfortunately, my efforts were insufficient and it still is not good enough.

However, I have one last trick up my sleeve, which is active wall-sensing angle adjustment. This is a pretty common feature in Micromice and I am taking some inspiration from a Micromouse guide I found online. Active wall-sensing was one of the first things I tried this week, but it didn’t end up working out because the Time of Flight sensors I’m using take 40 milliseconds each to send back a reading, and in that time all other code execution is blocked, including my PWM motor control. Even if the adaptive driving code worked, code execution is blocked for too long and it spins wildly out of control.

However, after digging through the library I’m using to interface with the sensors and despite the utter lack of documentation, I found out that it has an asynchronous mode that will allow me to continuously read from the sensors in a non-blocking manor.

class ToF_t {
   public:
    ToF_t(uint8_t initId, uint8_t initOffset) {
        id = initId;
        offset = initOffset;
    }

    void init() {
        tcaselect(id);
        if (!sensor.begin()) {
            Serial.print("Failed to find ToF sensor ");
            Serial.println(id);
            failure(2);
        }
        sensor.startRangeContinuous();
    }

    uint16_t getDistance() {
        tcaselect(id);
        if (sensor.isRangeComplete()) distance = sensor.readRange();
        return (distance);
    }

    bool detectWall() { return (getDistance() < MAZE_CELL_SIZE); }

   private:
    uint8_t id;
    Adafruit_VL53L0X sensor;
    uint8_t offset;
    uint16_t distance;

    void tcaselect(uint8_t i) {
        if (i > 7) return;

        Wire.beginTransmission(TCAADDR);
        Wire.write(1 << i);
        Wire.endTransmission();
    }
};

This is my new and improved ToF_t class that should hopefully allow for continuous senor polling that does not block the execution of other code.

I haven’t finished writing the adaptive driving code, as I just finished implementing asynchronous sensor polling today (2024-12-19), but I’m hopeful that it will work how I imagine it will. Maybe my Micromouse will finally work.

Senior Week 14

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The main thing I got done this week was building my 12x12 half-scale maze. The original reason I chose to build a half-scale Micromouse instead of a normal-scale one, even though it’s much harder, was because I wanted to be able to build a reasonably sized maze that could still fit on a tabletop.

This maze is fully reconfigurable and I should be able to build any pattern I want. It’s smaller than a true to-spec half-scale Micromouse maze, which is 22x22 cells. I haven’t printed enough wall posts to fill out the entire maze, but I don’t need more than I have right now, I’ll eventually print the rest.

This was the file I needed to fix PlatformIO, not sure why I suddenly needed it.

The maze took two days to make, and I spent the other two researching and testing ways to make my Micromouse more precise. I also spent quite a while chasing Github issues and forum posts trying to fix PlatformIO, which decided to break for some reason. Despite the… challenges… I’ve faced with it, I still much prefer using VSCode over the Arduino IDE.

Senior Week 13

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The first two days of my week I spent setting up a Debian server and filesharing container for the Shop. I wanted to take a quick break from working on my Micromouse and was reminded of my repeated frustrations with Google Drive. The shop uses Google Drive to transfer files between computers, such as from my own to the Laser Cutter computer, but it’s always slow and after editing a file, it takes a long time for the changes to sync.

I ended up building a server out of a Thinkpad running an instance of the adevur/easy-samba Docker container. It allows for instantaneous file transfers and can be used for other services as well, should the Shop require them.

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My big accomplishment for this week was finally getting my Micromouse running! It’s still a long way from being done, but all the parts are together and now the main thing it needs is some tuning. At the moment, it’s capable of navigating a maze, but it’s very inconsistent and it’s movements are quite imprecise. It needs to be baby-sat to keep from crashing into a wall. Some of the problems are due to the bumpy cardboard maze, and I do intend to build a nice wooden one. The maze I’ve been using so far is actually Gabe Araujo’s maze, who is building a normal size Micromouse.

The only information the robot is given in order to traverse a maze is:

Starting coordinates
Starting orientation
Goal coordinates
Cell size
Maze dimensions

Everything else is learned during runtime using the onboard sensors.

Yes I know that it keeps turning in the wrong direction, I intend to fix that.

Senior Week 12

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Now that the hardware for my Micromouse is done, I’ve started writing the hardware interface code that will allow my pathfinding algorithm to move the robot to actually solve a physical maze. In the past, I had been using the Arduino IDE 2.0 to develop code for Arduino boards, but I’ve always had some gripes with it. It doesn’t have very good type-checking and it takes forever to compile ESP32 code. The main reason for why it takes so long is that it always recompiles everything even if, for example, the libraries haven’t changed. I have switched to using VSCode with the PlatformIO extension. Not only does this new IDE offer good type checking, but it also caches object files and can reuse them. Because of this, compilations that sometimes took up to two minutes now take around 17 seconds (including upload time).

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I wrote a basic PID algorithm to control the turning of the robot that did work, but after wrangling with it a bunch I eventually gave up and used a PID control library. The library is a little better, but my algorithm was surprisingly good. Unfortunately, even the library, so far, isn’t good enough. Maybe with additional tuning I could get the control precise enough, but as it is now, I can rotate the Mouse a few degrees before it reacts. This is unacceptable and I will need to, somehow, make it even more precise.

Senior Week 11

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My PCBs arrived on Tuesday and I got straight to work on all the soldering and crimping needed to get everything assembled. I soldered lots of headers and crimped some extenders to raise the Top Board above the Bottom Board. Currently, they’re quite far apart and I’d like to minimize how tall my Micromouse is, so I’ll probably end up crimping some new extenders that are shorter.

I spent pretty much my whole week assembling hardware, but by Thursday I had finished and tested everything. I began writing the code to precisely control the movement of the robot, and it is looking to be more difficult and I had thought it would be. I have hope, though, and I believe that I’ll be able to get the level of precision I’m looking for. I’ll need to leverage the IMU and encoders to their fullest, and will probably need to implement PID control.

Senior Week 10

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This was a short week as we had Tuesday off because of the presidential election.

The main thing I did this week was to continue supervising the Sophomores in the machine shop while they were making their Turner’s Cubes. This took up pretty much all of my time, so I didn’t get to get much work done on my Micromouse.

On Monday, I made some changes to and ordered the Upper Boards from JLC PCB, so they should be arriving sometime next week and I should (hopefully) be able to finish the hardware for my Micromouse.

On Wednesday, I wrote code to turn the on-board Neopixel on the QT-PY into a status indicator. I will use the RGB-LED to indicate the current state of the Micromouse. The color scheme will be:

Green - Done
Blue - Waiting
Yellow - Moving
Red - Failure

void setColor(uint8_t color) {
  switch (color) {
    case RED:
      pixel.setPixelColor(0, 255, 0, 0);
      break;
    case GREEN:
      pixel.setPixelColor(0, 0, 255, 0);
      break;
    case BLUE:
      pixel.setPixelColor(0, 0, 0, 255);
      break;
    case YELLOW:
      pixel.setPixelColor(0, 255, 255, 0);
      break;
    case OFF:
      pixel.setPixelColor(0, 0, 0, 0);
      break;
  }
  pixel.show();
}

I also wrote some code to use the on-board push-button to prompt the Micromouse to continue. I can add a buttonCheckpoint(); line in the code to make the Mouse wait for a button press before continuing.

void buttonCheckpoint() {
  int time = millis();
  bool toggle = false;
  while (digitalRead(0) == HIGH) {
    if (millis() - time > 500) {
      if (toggle) {
        setColor(BLUE);
        toggle = false;
      } else {
        setColor(OFF);
        toggle = true;
      }
      time = millis();
    }
  }
  setColor(BLUE);
  delay(3000);
}

Last week, when I assembled the Lower Board, I switched one of the motors I had for another one that had straighter headers. I did not inspect or test the new motor at all. This was a mistake. Despite being labeled “50:1” the gear ratio on it was actually 75:1. This meant that one wheel took significantly more torque to turn and spun at a slower rate.

On Thursday, I desoldered the mislabeled motor and replaced it with one that I had verified had a 50:1 gear ratio.

Senior Week 09

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The sophomores did electronics this week, so I got a break from helping them with their Turner’s Cubes and had time to work on my Micromouse. I test-cut some versions of the lower board in acrylic, found some problems, fixed them, cut a (not actually) final version with the PCB mill, found another problem, and cut the (now hopefully final) version of the board that I have now. I’m not quite done assembling it, but it’s pretty much in it’s final state right now, other than a few missing headers.

I’ll test it once I’ve finished soldering everything on. Hopefully everything works as expected. I should be good to order the top board from (probably) JLC PCB. The top board is far too complex to route with just one side, and although our PCB mills can technically do double-sided boards they aren’t great and the through-holes don’t connect the two sides, only the vias do.

My Micromouse is finally coming together and at this rate, assuming the hardware interface code doesn’t take too long, I’ll probably be able to finish the project by the beginning of next year. I’ve already written the pathfinding algorithm, so it’s just translating “Turn 90 degrees right” and “Go forward 90mm” into real-world motion. I anticipate that to be significantly more difficult than it would sound, as the movements need to be quite precise and all I’ve got are two DC motors.

Senior Week 08

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While I did do some work on my Micromouse this week, I spent a majority of it in the machine shop helping the sophomores with their Turner’s Cubes. There are three pairs of sophomores (one for each mill) currently making their Cubes and I’ve been supervising/teaching them how to use the mills along with Mr. L.

It’s probably going to take a while for the sophomores to finish their cubes, if all of them even want to. This first batch of students is looking to take over a week to go from cut-stock to finished cubes, so I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for all the sophomores to finish.

The work I did this week on my Micromouse was pretty uneventful. I built a breadboard version of my circuit boards to confirm the electronics will work together. I also made an unfortunate discovery: The super small ToF sensors that I wanted to use are apparently a slightly different type that is less accurate than the other (larger) ones I had tested with. While I probably could still use the smaller ones, I’d really prefer the extra precision and have changed my circuit boards to use the older, larger ToF sensors.

Senior Week 07

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I spent this week doing two major things. The first one was designing the second iteration of my Micromouse. This new version features a stacked-PCB arrangement that significantly reduces the horizontal footprint of the robot. I hope I will actually be able to build this version. I haven’t thought too much about where the battery will go on this version, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out before too long.

The other thing I did this week was help Miles Hilliard debug JONA ROV.

This year, I want to take a step back from Sunk Robotics for a few reasons, the first is that I’m quite burnt out from last year. I spent the entire year focusing almost solely on JONA ROV and while I did build a pretty cool ROV, I overdid it and I’m just tired of ROVs now. The other major reason is because I’m a senior and this is my last year with Sunk Robotics. The younger members (who won’t be gone next year) need to get as much experience as they can, so I want to let them do as much as possible, with my help available when they need it.

Getting back to what I did this week, Miles has taken on the electronics portion of JONA and I’ve been helping him with trying to work out the problems that we had with it last year. The power issues are very-much-so still around and Miles can hopefully find a solution to them. All of this started, though, with isolating the problem exactly, which was what Miles and I did this week.

Senior Week 06

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I (thankfully) noticed on Tuesday that, despite my Micromouse being able to fit in a cell and rotate, it was too large to fit through the slightly-smaller open area between cells. Additionally, the Time of Flight (ToF) sensors were too high up and could not see the 25mm-high walls that the half-scale Micromouse rules require the maze to have.

After some deliberation, I eventually decided that I would need to find some smaller ToF sensors and completely redesign my Micromouse. It will have the same components, other than the new ToF sensors, but will be smaller. In order to accommodate this, I will be splitting the components across two vertically-stacked PCBs.

The new design is still concerningly large compared to the maze, and I might try to shrink it further. Now that I’ve committed to a stacked-PCB design, it should be possible to squeeze it even smaller.

The first image does not have the actual PCBs modeled, as it’s just a reference model for arranging parts. I have just begun designing the actual PCBs.

My QT-Py microcontrollers also arrived this week. I spent a whole day testing them out and, after a some finagling, got code uploaded and running on them. They are impressivly tiny and have two extremely useful features built onto them: A button (other than RESET) and a Neopixel. I will be making use of both.

Senior Week 05

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It’s out of focus T_T

This week was short, but I did get some important things done. I modeled and test-printed the custom gearing for the side of my Micromouse that needs on offset motor. I wasn’t sure if the resin printers would be able to print such small teeth, especially for helical gears, but the gears appear to be correct.

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They spin together smoothly, but I got the hole diameter wrong on the wheel, so I had to drill it out and now it wobbles. I’ll need to print a new version with the correct hole diameter.

This is the piece that will hold the geared wheel, it’s quite small and I’m really appreciating just how tiny my Micrmouse is going to be.

This piece was also printed on the Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro printer Alex Pilika brought in last year. Despite having been in the shop since last year, the printer was only just now set up. So far, it seems to be inconsistent, but when it prints well, it’s the best FDM printer in the shop.

Senior Week 04

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I finished up putting all of my parts into Fusion and I began designing my Micromouse. I’m only just now appreciating just how small half-scale Micromice are. Each cell is 90mm by 90mm. This means that my micromouse needs to fit inside a 45mm circle, but because I want some tolerance, I’ve decided to squeeze everything into a 40mm circle. The wheel-wells take up quite a bit of space, which leaves barely enough room for everything else.

Finding a battery that stores enough power but can fit in the awkward space has been a challenge.

This is my preliminary schematic of my Micromouse. It’s missing a LiPo charger, but other than that I think it’s good. My PCB will almost certainly need to be double-sided, which we can manufacture in the shop. I might just order them from JLC PCB, as they’re pretty cheap and much higher quality.

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I also wrote a super-duper simple version of a PID algorithm, it’s missing the “Integral” and “Derivative” parts, so I guess it’s just a “Proportional” algorithm. It oscillates some, but hopefully it should be good enough.

Senior Week 03

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The first two days of this week were spent finishing up refactoring my code. I couldn’t get it to run on an ATMEGA328… for some reason. I’m still not sure why. The algorithm should be able to run with the amount of RAM that microcontroller has, but apparently not. I have switched to an ESP32-S2 and the code now runs.

For now I’m using an Adafruit Feather ESP32-S2, but for my micromouse I think I want to use an Adafruit QT Py ESP32-S2. It has the same microcontroller as the board I’m using now, but it is much smaller.

After I finished with the code I began looking into hardware. I started with figuring out what motors and encoders I was going to use. The shop already had these super small DC motors with encoders already attached, so I’m going to use these. I learned how to use encoders and got it working with the ESP32-S2.

Lastly, I learned about Time of Flight sensors. They’re similar to LiDAR, but a single narrow cone instead of a full volumetric scanner. The units the shop already had were perfect, except for that they have a single hard-coded I2C address. This means that if I want to use multiple of them at once, (and I do) I need an I2C mutliplexer in order for them to not conflict with eachother. The shop also had those, and I got two working at once. My micromouse will have three.

Senior Week 02

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I spent the first half of my week attempting to get data from an optical computer mouse with an Arduino board. My intention was to use the (computer) mouse to track the xy movement of my (micro) mouse. However, I was ultimately unsuccessful and it appears I will need to find another way to track movement. Probably encoders.

After the disappointing outcome of my exploration into computer mice, I wanted to work on something other than electronics for a few days, so I began refactoring/rewriting my pathfinding code at the suggestion of Scott Campbell, who believed that I could make my implementation of a Flood-Fill pathfinding algorithm significantly more memory efficient.

I’m not done with refactoring the code, as I got side-tracked trying to write my own implementation of a First-In-First-Out (FIFO) Queue in Arduino/C++. I want to use a FIFO Queue in my new pathfinding algorithm, but Arduino/C++ does not natively support that data structure. I wanted to try writing my own, and I half succeeded. The code shown below is what I ended up writing. It has some very mysterious problems, though. When I compile it with G++ for Linux, it works fine, but when using the Arduino IDE it breaks.

I think this implementation (other than it’s bugs) is pretty cool, it leverages the “feature” of unsigned integers that they roll over to 0 when they reach their maximum. This means that data never needs to be moved to shift the index of all the elements over one, because it can just continuously append data and when it reaches the end of the internal array, it will just roll over back to the start.

To be a bit more specific about it’s problems, it works as expected when startIndex is a uint8_t, but that’s too small and I need at least a uint16_t. However, this results in some very strange behavior. After appending the first piece of data, startIndex suddenly skips from 0 to 256. This is a very suspicious number as it’s exactly 2^8, which implies something weird is happening to the low-byte and there’s a weird off-by-one error.

I don’t know what the problem is, and I’ll probably never know, as I’ve given up on writing my own and have resigned to using an Arduino library to create a FIFO Queue. It (so far) appears to work as expected.

class FIFOArray_t {
    struct xyPair_t array[65536];
    uint16_t startIndex = 0;
    uint16_t length = 0;

  public:
    struct xyPair_t read(uint16_t index) {
      index += startIndex;
      return (array[index]);
    }

    void remove() {
      startIndex++;
      length--;
    }

    int append(struct xyPair_t data) {
      uint16_t index = startIndex;
      index += length;
      if (index == startIndex && length != 0) return (0);
      array[index].y = data.y;
      array[index].x = data.x;
      length++;
      return (1);
    }
};

I am aware of the off-by-one error involving length, but as I said, I’m not actually going to end up using this code.

Senior Week 01

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The big thing I did this week was starting work on my Micromouse project. I started with modeling the maze the robot will traverse. I want to build a Micromouse to the half-size spec, so each cell is 9cm. I’m only making a 12x12 maze, though. The maze is easily reconfigurable, so I should only need to cut/print one set of parts and they can then be used for infinite different mazes.

I also began figuring out what hardware I want in my Micromouse. I originally wanted to use a Raspberry Pi Pico, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve been having trouble getting the BNO055 9-axis accelerometer to work with it. I could use a different IMU, but I have the feeling that I’ll have similar problems with all the other hardware I’ll end up using. The Pi Pico is a really great microcontroller, except for the fact that nothing supports it properly. I’ll probably just find a different microcontroller to use.

In the beginning part of the week, I helped William Tseng clean the water jet cutter. It hadn’t been cleaned in… longer than it’s been at the shop, and together we managed to shovel out quite a few 5-gallon buckets worth of abrasive. We were shoveling out far more than just the garnet we use at the shop, there were lots of other materials in there, most likely from previous owners.

Senior Week 00

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This was my first week back at MHS after summer vacation! Over the summer I did two notable things related to robotics. The first was that Sunk Robotics went to the MATE ROV International Champtionship in Kingsport Tennessee. We had a great time and although we only came in 9th place overall, we came in 3rd place for the proudct demonstration, which in my opinion in the most important.

A month and a half or so after the MATE ROV International Championship, Sunk Robotics was invited to give a demonstration on underwater ROVs for ASLP, a summer camp at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. I and a few other members went and gave a talk and a live demonstration about underwater robotics and our ROV, JONA.

Now, on to things I actually did just this past week! It’s been mostly setting and up and settling in. I set up/fixed the FDM 3D printers. One of the Fusion 3s had a broken extruder that I managed to fix. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do any test prints on them as we forgot to order more glue sticks. However, I also set up the Lulzbot printer and that one doesn’t need glue. I printed a test print and it worked great!

I also set up the big Tormach CNC Mill. That involved putting in and tramming the vice as well as installing and setting up the automatic tool measurer.

One other thing is that because Scott Campbell is going on co-op this year, his computer station was available, so I moved there and I’ve got a new station to work at now.

Junior Week 38

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I honestly did do much this week. I spent two days helping to clean up the shop and sort miscellaneous items. However, Sunk Robotics has been doing a lot of testing in this final week before the international competition. Matty’s autonomous coral transplant program looks promising. It’s still very unclear whether it’ll be readt in time for our product demonstrations, but it can successfully navigate to the coral transplant site while carrying the coral head without any human input.

I switched around our bottom and back cameras, as the bottom camera is more important and the module that used to occupy that position was rather unreliable. We’ve been having issues with that camera module for a long time and I do not know what the problem is. I’ve tried so many different things to test and/or fix it, but none have succeeded. It doesn’t really matter now, though. The back camera is by far the least important, and we’ll be able to compete just fine without it.

Jonas had been saying that it was hard to attach the carabiner to the U-Bolt, so I reinforced that so now it doesn’t wobble.

I did honestly not that much packing… We never really unpacked most of the stuff we brought to the regional, so all I had to do was verify what we were bringing and add a few items. We’re ready to travel to Tennessee.

Junior Week 37

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I spent this week building the 50ft tether. Last week I had done the soldering and epoxying, but this week I tied the three cables together, put on the cable sleeve, and attached floatation. The new tether is half as long and will hopefully have significantly less voltage drop. It is also quite a bit more flexible, which might help with it getting tangled and bent. In additition to installing the new tether, I cleaned the cart and reorganized everything. It is now in tip-top shape. It was rather impressive how much gunk had accumulated on it, especially the top part that gets more wet.

The new tether has three of my epoxy jobs on it, unlike our old tether which had one of mine and two of the huge and ~~horrible~~ bulky blocks of epoxy. It honestly didn’t matter much, but in my heart I care.

I believe that Sunk Robotics is ready for the International Competition in Kingsport Tennessee.

Junior Week 36

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week has been mainly taken up with my assembling of our 50ft tether. We originally built a 100ft tether because we didn’t want to ever run into a scenario where we didn’t have a long enough tether, but it turns out that the tether can be too long. JONA ROV works as is, but there is a significant voltage drop on the ROV side while drawing a large amount of current. The shorter tether should significantly reduce voltage drop, while still being more than long enough for the MATE ROV Competition.

We’re building a whole new tether, so we’ll still have our 100ft tether if we ever need the extra range.

Midway through the week, it looked like we’d need to put a hold on the 50ft tether for a few days as we did not end up having enough epoxy to seal the splices in the tether for the Blue Trail Engineering connectors. Luckily, Mr. Christy was able to pick up some epoxy on his way home and we were only set back one day instead of the rest of the week.

We’ve been having a very annoying and potentially competition-costing problem where the bottom camera is very inconsistent to turn on. Once it’s on, it’s stable, but getting it to turn on is a big pain and can take quite a few power cycles. I never really figured out the problem, as (in theory) the hardware in the bottom camera is identical to the back camera, which has had no issues whatsoever.

I had a hunch that maybe the RPi in the bottom camera was somehow broken or otherwise just less resilient to wonky power-ons, like what the ROV does on startup. I switched the hardware out for another camera module I had and, while I haven’t done extensive testing yet, it appears to have solved the problem. Hopefully this will significantly improve the reliability of JONA ROV.

Junior Week 35

Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On Sunday we got our technical documentation scoresheets back so we were able to review them and edit our Tec Doc for the international competiton. I made quite a few changes and went over them with Zack before integrating them into our doc. I also helped Zack with our budgeting for our trip. It’s a very rough estimate, but it looks like this trip will be cheaper than last year, mainly thanks to Tennessee being close enough for us to drive to. Not having to buy flights, train tickets, or bus tickets will significantly reduce travel expenses. It also means we won’t need to pack JONA into a box.

I also helped to reimage some of our machines in the shop and set up a new laptop for the shop. These items were generously donated by the Toyota Research Institute.

I hope that the Robotics Team will be able to requisition the Thinkpad for next year, as our current club laptop is not great and we’ve mainly been using Matty’s personal laptop for piloting JONA. Matty’s laptop works great, but he and his laptop will be gone next year so we need to find a replacement. I’m not too sure if the Thinkpad will actually be better than our current laptop. The new one has a 7th gen i7, and our current one has a 10th gen intel whose category I don’t know.

Junior Week 34

Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Just before the regional I had finished the Power Distribution Board V3. I put it into JONA and was dismayed to see that it did not function. I put the old board back in, as I didn’t have time to debug the new board and we needed a working ROV and as much practice as possible for the upcoming competition.

Now that the regional is over (and we won!) I have time to see what was wrong with the board.

I managed to fix most of the issues with the board, but one issue remains. The fourth channels on these optoisolators do not work. The datasheet shows they’re no different than the other three, so I have no idea what the issue could be. I haven’t done too much debugging, as exploring this issue is a low-priority and high-effort endeavor.

I didn’t get a picture of the board… This is the best one I have as-of writing this

I’ve managed to reduce the amount of time that we need to wait to turn the ROV on to ten seconds by adding a 1 Ohm resistor to the space I had added in case I needed it. The ~0 Ohm connection through the MOSFET let too much current through and interfered with the startup process. The 1 Ohm resistor still interferes, but less so now.

Junior Week 33

Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I organized everything we’re planning to bring to the regional, I hope it’s everything we’ll need. I’ll try to pack all of this this into the yellow Pelican case, but I doubt it’ll all fit. We might need to use one of the large black cases. Also those are technically still Eben’s……

I soldered a replacement ESC Board. I hope we won’t need it, but the ESCs have been the most unreliable part of JONA and they may break. The motor connectors aren’t soldered on yet as the two different ESC boards have different connectors. Those will be soldered on at the regional if we end up needing the board

This image is actually from last week, as I didn’t get a picture of the part.

Mr. Christy also needed me to mill some more parts for him. The ones I did last week were 100mils too small (the holes) so Mr. Christy needed to recut them and have me re-chamfer them.

Junior Week 32

Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I spent this week assembling the new Power Distribution Board V3. This new board features an isolated 5V power system which should hopefully eliminate the ground noise caused by the ESCs that were interfering with the 5V system.

I haven’t actually tested the board yet, other than the voltage regulating features, as I haven’t had time, and by the time that I do, it’ll be quicker to just put it in JONA and see if it works. Other than rebinding the motors, it should just be a drop-in replacement.

Mr. Christy also asked me to mill a chamfer on a part he water-jet cut, so I did that too.

Junior Week 31

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

April break was last week, the robotics team did a lot of practice over the week and Jonas is hopefully well experienced in piloting JONA now.

Of course, we will continue to practice, but hopefully we should be pretty good for the competition now.

All of our documentation is due on April 26, so this week we’ve been extremely busy writing it. I wrote a bunch of stuff a while ago, so we haven’t actually needed to write everything this week. But still, we did end up writing quite a bit.

I also made an SID for JONA, which introduced me to the webapp LucidChart. It’s…. fine, but there are a few things that I find annoying about it.

Junior Week 30

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Thursday last week I had started a project to build a shelf for the cart, but that got postponed when on Friday, the day of our Andrews presentation, JONA ROV mysteriously stopped working. Before we left for the Andrews, I determined that one of the ESC Board was the cause of the problem. For the live demos for the middle schoolers. I rewired the motors so that only four of them worked, but four motors gave JONA enough freedom of movement for the demo. It was quite disappointing that it broke just in time for a live demonstration.

It took me three days to fix JONA, and I am left none the wiser as to the cause of the problem than before.

Not one but two ESCs had mysteriously broken and were drawing massive amounts of current whenever they were connected. I ended up replacing them and the ESC Board worked again. However, before I determined they were the issue, I ended up desoldering a functional ESC in the process. Sometime between me testing the first ESC I desoldered and after I tested it again once it was back on the ESC Board, it was no longer functional.

I have to assume the repeatedly soldering and desoldering the ESCs damages them over time, or at least has a high chance to damage them each time I do it. This ESC worked fine before I began investigating, but now it is dead. (For an unknown reason).

The whole ordeal finished with me replacing a total of three ESCs, all of which broke for unknown reasons. Definitely not for the regional, but assuming we win, I plan to design an ESC Board V3 that we not require the ESCs to be directly soldered to the PCBs. It was a good idea, but ultimately it appears it has too high a chance to damage the ESCs.

After I had JONA fixed, I began cleaning the cart. It desperately needed a wipe-down and the cables were a mess. I reorganized the cart and hopefully it should remain so for a slightly longer amount of time than it lasted before. I am aware that it will be impossible to keep the cart clean and organized, so I guess we’ll just have to give it semi-monthly cleanings. Or something.

Junior Week 29

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

At the start of the week I finished soldering the Ethernet Switch Board V2, which features a Gigablox Gigabit Ethernet Switch.

The new switch works great, and not only does the RPi have a gigabit connection to the surface computer, all the camera feeds don’t share a single 100MBps connection now.

The third version of the Power Distribution Board is done, but I’m waiting or order it until Scott has finished a PCB of his own. The shipping cost from JLCPCB is about the same as the PCBs themselves, so we are trying to consolidate orders to save on shipping. The new board features a fully isolated 5V power system, with a new regulator and opto-isolators. The board also continues the migration effort towards XT30 connectors and has some holes to accommodate a servo for our prospective gripper.

I think other than the PDBoard V3, my current projects for the robotics team are mostly done, which means I’ll be open to start another personal project. ~~I’ll need to think of something to do.~~ UPDATE BELOW

UPDATE:

Thursday after school Matty wanted to make some backups of the Tube Cameras’ SD cards. While he was doing that, I decided to begin designing a shelf to add to our cart. We’re having serious organizational problems with the cart, and while I intend to fix them, they will just reappear without a better solution. My solution is to create an additional level for storage that will be organized to hold miscellaneous parts, while the bottom level is for more staple things.

Junior Week 28

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The PCBs arrived this week so I’ve begun assembling them! I began with the Logic Board, which is the most important to get working. The capacitor control circuitry is very important to get running because bottom camera mysteriously won’t turn on when the capacitor is plugged in. This actually makes quite a bit of sense, but it’s mysterious because the rear camera (which has identical hardware) has no issues at all.

I tested the circuitry before putting it into JONA and it appeared to work, but it causes strange issues when the RPi5 tries to control it. I need to look into this more in the coming week.

I also began assembling the new Gigabit Ethernet Switch Board. This new board accommodates a Gigabit ethernet switch and an RPi Zero to act as a router. The RPi5 should be able to act as the router without issue, but it is causing issues with the front camera when it is.

Scott, Ben, William, Tanzy, and I all contributed to buying 108 cans from Wegmans for the NTHS Food Drive. Wegmans double-delivered so we got a total of 217 cans. If Robotics doesn’t win… I don’t know.

Junior Week 27

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I verified that the PCBs I designed last week were good. I didn’t find any issues, so they got ordered.

I’ve also been redesigning the Power Distribution Board… again. In order to accommodate an isolated voltage regulator and some optoisolators. I’ve needed to make a number of footprints by hand, so it’s been going slow.

On Wednesday, I helped Matty tune the PID systems of JONA. Now that they’re tuned, the ROV will maintain a set depth, roll, and pitch angle. This will significantly improve controllability.

Also on Wednesday, the ROV broke, I think it has to do with some water getting in, evaporating, and then condensing, but I really don’t know. I doubt I’ll ever know the source of the problem.

I did figure out what broke, though. One of the ESCs had a capacitor pop and it sprayed it’s capacitor gunk on the ESC. I will need to replace that unit.

Junior Week 26

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I spent this week continuing to increase reliability in JONA ROV’s 5V power system, with more success than last week. JONA ROV can reliably function without random shutdowns, but powering it on is now a bit of an ordeal and the bottom camera no longer works. Fortunately, the cause for both of these problems is known. Both are caused by the 2.5F supercapacitor I added to solve the random shutdowns.

Miles Hilliard came up with the solution I’m going to implement. He suggested that the capacitor be, by default, disconnected from the 5V power system through an NPN or MOSFET, and only be connect to the system by the RPi5 after its finished booting. Miles and Shane designed the circuit to control the capacitor, and I made the necessary modifications to the Logic Board. I hope to order this new Logic Board soon.

Matty had suggested that the latency and frame-rate problems we’ve been having with the cameras are, at least in part, caused by a lack of available bandwidth connecting the surface laptop to the ethernet switch. We always knew about the 100Mbps limit, but didn’t think that it would pose too much of a problem. It appears we have been proven wrong. Luckily, Bot Blox, the manufacturer of the 100Mbps switch we were using also selling a slightly larger Gigabit switch. This new switch should alleviate all of the bandwidth issues, but a new PCB is required in order to accommodate it’s larger footprint and gigabit connection.

The Tube Cameras can’t get gigabit connections, as two of the twisted pairs in the CAT 5E cable are needed for power, but each individual camera shouldn’t need more than 100Mbps. It’s only the tether and the RPi5 that need a gigabit connection, as all the camera feeds need to be transmitted through their connections.

I also added mounting holes for an RPi Zero, should we decide to add one to the Ethernet Switch Board. We’ve been facing issues with the front camera, although I don’t know the details, I know that it has something to do with the RPi5 acting as both a camera and a router. If the increased bandwidth doesn’t fix the issues with the front camera, we’re going to try using a separate Pi Zero as the on-board router.

Junior Week 25

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

JONA ROV has been experiencing major power stability problems with its 5V system. I’ve been attempting to isolate and solve the problem for… a while, and I’m still not really any closer to solving it.

The new Power Distribution Board is done and it has quite the janky capacitor+diode addition to it. I can’t really tell if the capacitor is helping much, though.

I tried adding some capacitors to the 5V system and they do help, but they also make turning the ROV on a bit of a hassle. The RPi5 is fussy with how it receives power and the capacitors interfere with it turning on smoothly. I ended up adding a 2.2mF capacitor and a 2.5F supercapacitor.

Junior Week 24

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On Monday I tested the feasibility of re-programming the ESCs to change the startup melody to “Shipping Up To Boston”. I need to use the website esc-configurator.com because the official BLHeli software doesn’t allow for reprogramming the startup melodies for 8-bit ESCs (which the Blue Robotics ESCs are). I have so far been able to change the startup melody, but the re-programmed ESCs don’t function yet. I only worked on this on Monday, as the new Power Distribution Boards arrived on Tuesday.

I spent Tuesday soldering and debugging the 2.5V voltage reference for the ADC. It is by far the smallest component I’ve ever soldered and I ended up using the hot plate to solder it, as the hot air gun would blow the part away even on its lowest air setting.

On Wednesday I began soldering on the other components, and after school Shane and I discovered that the ADC has its own voltage reference and no VREF pin… So the voltage reference on the PCB is useless.

We also discovered that the ROV is broken. During the process of once more reducing voltage drop, something broke and I2C stopped working. I think that the problem is with the 9-axs IMU, but I am not 100% sure and need to do some additional debugging.

Junior Week 23

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I designed the Power Distribution Board V2. Last Wednesday, it was made clear that there is a serious problem with the 5V system on JONA ROV. With the help of Mr. Christy’s friend, Shane, I did some diagnosing, but I’m still not 100% sure what the cause of the problem is. It’s probably due to insufficient current supply, as our current 5V regulator can only supply up to 3A. Anyone who has read the electrical specifications of Raspberry Pis should know that this is not enough, and we always knew that 3A was insufficient, but we’re only just now having a problem with it.

The new PD Board will have an 8A voltage regulator as well as current and voltage monitoring capabilities.

I’m still not 100% sure that the new voltage regulator will fix our problems, but I have no idea what the source of the issue could be if it isn’t the current supply. Even still, having a greater maximum current draw is good, and I continue to learn more about PCB design.

I believe the new board is done and ready to be ordered, but I still have the nagging feeling that I’m missing something. I intend to ignore it, though, as I have felt this way every single time I’ve ordered PCBs from a PCB company and haven’t forgotten anything yet.

Junior Week 22

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week was rather slow, as I was between projects and was doing a number of quick and small tasks.

The main exciting thing that happened this week was that JONA finally got to take a swim in the pool. Unfortunately, the rear camera didn’t work due to a corrupted SD card (which might be due to a hard power-off or just a bad card) and there were… technical difficulties that led to the IMU not working during our testing. The IMU issue is fixed now, but that meant that we couldn’t test rotational PID this week.

The RPi4 is having power issues. I thought that I had solved this issue by decreasing the resistance in the 5V power systems, but the problem has reappeared. I don’t think that it is begin caused by the same source, though, this time. There is very little voltage drop, not enough to be causing this issue. I believe that out voltage regulator simply cannot supply enough current to power the 5V system. Unfortunately, I can’t accurately measure the current consumption of the ROV, as the Shop doesn’t have any tools to measure quick current spikes, which I believe to be the problem.

I haven’t confirmed the actual cause of the ROV’s problems, and am betting that it’s due to insufficient current supply. If increasing the available current still doesn’t solve the issue… I don’t know what I’ll do.

I also started designing a mechanical gripper for the ROV. I only did the very basic mechanical design before I handed it off to a prospective new member. Alex Pilika is a sophomore in the Robotics & Engineering shop and has expressed interest in joining the team. He has said that he will attempt to design a gripper, but honestly, I’m doubtful that it’ll actually get done in a reasonable amount of time. I guess I’ll see in the next week or so.

Junior Week 21

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This has been a very lathe-filled week.

My Machinist’s Jack is complete. It’s….. mostly flat, although it a bit wiggly when fully extended. I might make another so the shop has a set later, but that’s not something I’m going to do soon, I’m done with the lathe for the time being.

Wednesday after school, JONA has its first swim since I redid the ESC PCBs. Although our dumpster is rather small, the test was very promising and I’m very excited for when we can put it in the MHS pool next week. Other than some weights, which I’ll make sometime before 2/7, and a manipulator system (TBD), JONA is done!

Some other small things I did this week include making two pieces for a project of Mr. L’s with the lathe, and helping him (more like hovering over his shoulder while he follows my guide) with the water jet cutter.

Junior Week 20

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I spent most of this week working on my Machinist’s Jack project. I spent the first two days attempting to turn the head of the jack, and I almost completed it. However, the threads I made had too high a diameter because I made the assumption that 1/2-13 screws are actually 1/2in wide. This is not the case. I attempted to save what I had made but ultimately had to scrap it. It did serve as a refresher on how to use a lathe, though, as I had very little previous experience using them before.

Wednesday after school I and a number of other team members wrapped our tether. Although I’m still not sure how we’re going to add flotation to it, at the moment I think the tether is in a very good place right now. I also added strain relief to the tether on the ROV’s side. I intend to use the same system on the surface, but need to find one more part before I can finish that.

Wednesday and Thursday I made the base of my Machinist’s Jack. It’s not quite done, with just a little but of facing left to remove the excess material on one side, but other than that this part is done.

Junior Week 19

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week has marked the end of my major contributions to the robotics team. Although I will of course continue to help, my two main projects are now complete.

On Wednesday, Mr. Christy’s friend Shane helped fix the voltage drop that was causing instability in JONA ROV’s 5V systems. With that fixed, JONA ROV is now fully functional and can begin pool testing.

I tested my water jet guide with the help of juniors Tanzerul Azam and William Tseng. My water jet guide is now complete. It is available here.

With all of the projects I’d been devoting most of my time to complete, I now have almost nothing to do in the shop. This means that I can start a new project, or more specifically, re-start an old one. At the very end of my Sophomore year, I began designing and manufacturing some machinists jacks. My first attempt did not end well, but I believe that, with the knowledge I gained from my first attempt, I can successfully manufacture them this time. I just started to turn the first one on Thursday, and I predict this project will take at minimum all of next week.

Junior Week 18

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I hit a major milestone with JONA ROV and the Robotics Team. Although on Wednesday the shop was flooded so I didn’t get any work done, I still managed to complete some tasks.

I soldered the second ESC PCB and tested each ESC. All four worked, so I then soldered the XT30 connectors onto the remaining four motors. I was able to assemble everything and JONA ROV is now, theoretically, fully functional. Wednesday after school Matty was able to test each motor and they all work! However, we also discovered another problem. There is a very mysterious voltage drop in the 5V system that I have no idea how it even exists. When I measure voltage from two points on a continuous power bus, I read two different values.

Given all of the knowledge I have of electrical engineering, this should be impossible. I will need to seek help from some more experienced people in order to solve this problem. This voltage drop is (I believe) responsible for instability in the electrical system and results in the RPi4 not behaving properly. In addition to the voltage drop, we may be over-currenting our voltage regulator, although I am doubtful that we are.

I also began mounting the rear camera. I was having problems with it earlier, but they appear to have disappeared. I believe the problems I have having earlier are connected to the problems I am having now with the RPi4.

Junior Week 17

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I entered what will hopefully be the final stage of building JONA ROV. The very last day of school before Christmas Break, the ESC PCB V2s arrived. This week I have begun assembling them. Their updated design allowed the ESCs to fit more flush against the PCB and makes surface-mount soldering them with solder paste easier.

I have found a good method for soldering the ESC to these PCBs. I first add just enough solder paste to make a connection, soldering everything together, and then add more solder with a soldering iron and solder wire. This method has so far been consistent and I have one full ESC PCB V2 assembled.

On Thursday I soldered the male XT30 connectors onto the thruster wires and soldered a female XT30 connector onto the power connector. I plugged everything together and the four thrusters connected to the new PCB successfully played the startup sound. I unfortunately am unable to actually drive the motors via the Raspberry Pi 4 without Matty, so they haven’t been tested all together yet. Each ESC was individually tested by myself as a soldered them, though, so I have confirmed that each unit does function.

Junior Week 16

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week was, again, quite slow. I’m once again waiting on my two main projects, so I’ve been doing some smaller robotics team things and continuing to work on my water jet guide.

On Wednesday I cut off all of the super high-gauge motor cable extensions are replaced them with lower-gauge ones. These should not be points of failure like the previous ones might have been.

Thursday I soldered our new ethernet cable onto its Blue Trail Engineering connector. This new ethernet cable is stranded, so it’s far more flexible than our old one. This new ethernet cable has not yet been potted.

In addition to soldering the motor cable extensions, I helped Milo Austin operate the water jet as he was cutting a hole in a ceramic tile of the Construction shop. This was the first time I’d cut in a super brittle material like ceramic and I certainly learned some important things about the water jet in the process.

Throughout the week, whenever I didn’t have anything else to do, I was working on my water jet guide. I’d say it’s about halfway done as of 2023-12-21. I do wonder how much it’ll actually get used, as I know I wouldn’t want to learn how to use the water jet just from a guide. I’d want an actual person to teach me.

Junior Week 15

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week was rather slow, as the two projects I’ve been working on, the electronics for JONA ROV and the cameras for JONA ROV, need parts that I have to wait to arrive.

The parts I needed for the electronics for JONA ROV arrived Wednesday, so I spent a majority of that day working on the ESC Board v2. The 3-pin XT30 connectors arrived and I needed to test the footprints I’d downloaded. It was a good thing that I did, as they were not correct and I needed to edit them to fit the parts. The 3-pin XT30 connectors were the last parts I needed to test, so with that done we ordered the board. They should arrive sometime next week.

Mr. Christy wanted me to write a guide for our OMAX 2626 PRECISION JETMACHINING CENTER, so far, I’ve written a text guide, but I will add pictures.

See the guide I’ve written (as of 2023-12-14)

Export your file as a .dxf in inches format from Fusion 360
Load onto USB drive
Turn on air
Turn on water
Turn on power
Rotate the power switch on water compressor
Rotate the power switch on computer terminal
Remove all USB drives from computer (It tries to boot off of them and I'm too scare to disable USB boot because Windows complained I broke it when I tried)
Press power button on computer
Ignore Windows' complaints we haven't paid for Windows
Plug your USB drive into the computer
If the material you intend to cut is NOT already loaded and secured into the machine:
Open the program "OMAX Make Premium"
Click "OK"
If the cutting head us lowered so that when you jog it, it might crash:
Loosen the cutting head if it is not already loosened (CCW on handle on side of cutting head)
Raise the cutting head until it is a safe distance up (enough to make sure the cutting head won't crash)
Jog the cutting head away from the material (enough so you can take it out and put in the new sheet)
Secure your material in the cutting bed with at least 2 inches of space in-between where you want your part to be cut and the walls of the cutting bed (Use clamps and weights, make sure there is enough room so the cutting head won't crash)
Close the program "OMAX Make Premium"
If the material you intend to cut IS already in the bed:
Make sure your material is fully secured (It shouldn't be able to move)
If your material is not secured properly:
Secure your material in the cutting bed with at least 2 inches of space in-between where you want your part to be cut and the walls of the cutting bed (Use clamps and weights, make sure there is enough room so the cutting head won't crash)
Fill the sand container (if it's not already full) using the measuring cup (the sand is in a bag behind the waterjet)
Open the program "OMAX Layout Premium"
Under "File" from the top bar, select "Import from other CAD"
Select your .dxf
Click "OK"
Right-click "Quality" from the bottom panel
Click "All"
Click "3"
Click "Clean" from the right panel
Click "Start"
Click "OK"
If you want to do autorouting, click "Autopath" from the left panel
If you want to route things manually:
Draw lead-ins on the side you want to cut from using the "lead-in" tool from the left panel (inside of holes, outside of outline, etc)
Draw line from a corner of part to first lead-in using the "line" tool from the left panel
Draw lines from each lead-in to the next until done
THE LONG SIDE IS THE LEAD IN; THE SHORT SIDE IS THE LEAD OUT
Click "Post" from the right panel
If you did autorouting:
Click on the top-left most point (A point at the end of an unconnected line)
If you did manual routing:
Click on the beginning of the first line you drew (the one connected to nothing in the corner of your part)
Review toolpath, make sure everything will be cut on the correct side (The pink line is your imported geometry) (Etc, holes cut on the inside, main outline cut on the outside) (If it is wrong and you did manual routing, go back and change it, if you did autorouting…. IDK how to fix it)
Click "Save"
Right-click "Post" from the right panel
Click "Open ORD path in Make"
Set material from dropdown menu
Set thickness in text-box
Click "OK"
Click "OK"
Click "OK"
Flip yellow splash-guard up (if not already up)
Jog the machine to where you want your part to be cut, the position the cutting head should be where you clicked after you clicked "Post" (a corner of your part) (Use "Jog -X", "Jog +X", "Joy -Y", and"Jog +Y" buttons)
Click BOTH "Zero" buttons, also click "OK" after each "Zero" button
Loosen the cutting head if it is not already loosened (CCW on handle on side of cutting head)
Lower cutting head until 1/16 inch above material (Use the piece of 1/16 metal on the desktop, it should just touch the metal but not pin it down) (CW on handle on top of the cutting head)
Tighten the cutting head (CW on handle on side of cutting head)
Flip the yellow splash-guard down
Raise water laver until it is halfway up the yellow splash-guard using "Water Level" switch
Click "Begin Machining"
Click "Start"
Lower water level until just below your material using the "Water Level" switch
Jog cutting head away from part
Turn off air
Turn off water
Shut down the computer using Windows' "Shutdown" button in the Windows Start Menu (wait until the computer is off to continue to next step)
Rotate the power switch on computer terminal
Rotate the power switch on the water compressor
Turn off power

Because I didn’t have much to work on this week, I started work on a Christmas gift for one of my family members. I cut and bent this piece of 1/8″ aluminum, and I intend to spray-paint it black and then laser-engrave a design on it.

Junior Week 14

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week I redesigned the ESC PCB with all of the knowledge I learned from my first attempt.

This new version will address the two main problems with the ESC PCB v1. The primary thing that is different is the connectors. This version will use XT30 connectors, which should hopefully have a lower resistance. I also had a chance to remake my footprint of the Blue Robotics ESC. I learned that I need far less clearance then I thought I did, so the ESC can be packed together closer. This allow the power input and signal connectors to be places away from each other and not overlap. Their overlapping made connecting and disconnecting the signal connector very difficult.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to order these PCBs until our parts for them have arrived. I don’t know for sure that my footprints of the 3-pin XT30 connectors are good, so I need to test them before we commit on this new ESC PCB design.

I also began building JONA’s second Tube Camera.

Junior Week 13

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week I had to put PCB design on pause, as I was waiting to be able to speak with Shane about what he believes the problems was with the old ESC PCBs. We did discover the problem, Ben’s and my attempt at attaching the motors to the ESC PCBs without the actual connectors proved to be…. less than ineffectual. Accidental bridging was the cause of us blowing two traces on the PCBs.

I assembled our downwards-facing camera this week, it employs the new 5V PoE “standard” we developed. It requires only a single CAT 5E cable to transmit both 5V power and 100mbps ethernet. I have yet to mount it, though, as I write this, the part is printing.

I also began adding all of the tasks I need to do to Sunk Robotics’ new task management system: Notion. I can certainly see the advantage of this system, but adding all of my tasks will be a pain (I will only have to do this many at a time once, though).

Junior Week 12

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

(Late because at first I didn’t even intend to write this, but I didn’t want to be missing a week so here it is)

The only really notable thing that happened this (very short) week was the robotics trip to MITRE. We missed periods 3-6 and attended the opening ceremony of MITRE’s Blue Tech Lab. There were a bunch of important people there, including Under Secretary Spinrad of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

We were also invited to another event that’s going to be hosted at MITRE. January 27-28, MATE will be hosted an event to educate teachers about the MATE ROV competition, with the intent of starting more teams in the New England area. Sunk Robotics was invited to speak about our experience in the competition, and about how we got started as a MATE ROV team. We have yet to decide who will go, as I doubt they really want us to bring the whole team. Personally, I think we should bring a maximum of four people.

Junior Week 11

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The MITRE trip is on Monday and I spent this week trying to get as much of JONA ROV done as possible. This involved a lot of crimping and soldering. Ben Wirz, who had been working on the float for Sunk Robotics, paused his work and assisted me with much of the electronics assembly this week.

We got some pool time on both Monday and Wednesday, which was very helpful especially for our previous year’s ROV S.T.E.V.E., as we’re going to demo it at MITRE’s Blue Tech Lab. JONA ROV also had it’s inaugural swim on Monday. We assembled all of the penetrators Monday in-class and were able to put it into the pool after school. At the moment, JONA ROV is very positively buoyant, so we’ll need to add weights to it in order to maintain neutral buoyancy.

Unfortunately, I do not believe the JONA ROV will be functional by Monday, and we won’t be able to demo it in MITRE’s pool. We don’t have enough crimps for the thrusters, so we can’t connect them to the ESC PCBs. Other than that, though, the electronics for JONA ROV are done! (Although they have not been tested yet)

Junior Week 10

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I spent all of this week cutting parts for the JONA ROV frame. Everyone had Tuesday off, but Mr. L offered to let me come to the shop. Ben Wirz and I were in the shop from 8am-2pm on Tuesday and got quite a bit done. We successfully soldered a full ESC PCB. I tested each ESC (individually, not all together) and they all work! The second ESC PCB has been less straightforward, but I’m confident we can get it to work quickly. (Ben has been doing most of the ESC PCB work now, I just helped him for the first one)

The big thing I worked on this week was the JONA ROV frame. On Wednesday I finished cutting everything and assembled the frame! I believe the frame is ready for MITRE (By the way, the robotics team was invited to the opening ceremony of MITRE’s giant tank) There’s still work to be done on it, such as coloring it, but for now I can call it “done”. Next week will be all about the electronics for JONA. I hope JONA ROV will be fully functional by the 20th (The MITRE Tank Opening Ceremony)

Junior Week 09

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week I built a cardboard model of JONA ROV. I laser cut all of the parts and cut lengths on 80/20. I had thought that the 80/20 we had came pre-threaded, as the 80/20 on S.T.E.V.E. was threaded, but apparently the stuff I used was not. I tapped the parts of 80/20 that needed screws through them. In the process of assembling the model, I noticed that some holes had not been cut, and I found out that I had forgotten to model them in the 3D model. I also ran out of the screws I’ll use to assemble the frame, so I ordered more of them.

Building a cardboard model of the ROV was definitely a good idea, it reassured me that everything would work the way I wanted, and helped me discover some mistakes in my 3D model. Unfortunately, the interlocking tabs can’t be tested in cardboard, as they’re dependent on the thickness of the material, and cardboard is significantly thicker than the 1/8in aluminum the final frame will be made out of.

Recorded by Ben Wirz

I began cutting the final metal frame out of aluminum with the Water-Jet Cutter. It was fixed just this Monday, and I finally got to learn how to use it! It wasn’t too difficult, as it is similar to many of the other CNC machines I’ve used before such as the Plasma Cutter and CNC Router. The Water-Jet was broken for most (if not all) of last year, and I’d been waiting for an opportunity to use it for a long time. Hopefully, by the end of next week, all of the parts for the frame will be cut and sanded. Ben suggested we get the pieces anodized, but I think we’ll just end up spray-painting them.

I also ordered the rest of the PCBs for the electronics enclosure. The ESC PCB did not have any problems (other than it’s color) so we went ahead and ordered the other PCBs. We decided to go with green in order to stay consistent, although I’m sure the black PCBs we had planned on would have looked better.

Junior Week 08

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week was quite slow, as I’ve been waiting for parts for both the ROV Frame and Electronics Enclosure. I took this time to begin writing documentation for everything I’ve done so far. MATE requires extensive documentation of the process of building our ROV. I’ve so far written a fair amount about the Frame, Electronics Enclosure, Camera System, and Thrusters. The following is an excerpt from what I wrote about JONA ROV’s thrusters.

“We decided to design our own thrusters guards, although we were heavily influenced by UWROV’s design. Our thrusters guards meet the IP-20 requirements of the MATE ROV competition but cause the minimum impedance of water through our Blue Robotics T200 thrusters. This allows us to make use of as much of the force our thrusters generate as possible while still maintaining the standard of safety required of us.”

On Wednesday the ESC PCBs I ordered arrived! They arrived super quickly, far quicker than we expected, although this turned out to be a bad thing. The reason the PCBs arrived so fast was because they were green. We thought we ordered black PCBs, which take longer to make, but for some reason we got green ones instead. Regardless, the color is aesthetic only, and has no impact on the functionality of the board.

Mr. Christy and I attempted to solder a Blue Robotics ESC to one of the boards, but the solder paste Mr. Christy had did not work. We’re unsure as to why, but the solder paste melted almost instantly (suspiciously quickly) and it was far too runny. It didn’t wick onto the solder pads and we decided not to attempt any further soldering until we had new solder paste. The solder paste we used was 6 years old, but I’m unsure how long it takes the kind we used to expire.

Thursday I soldered all of the connectors onto one of the ESC PCBs. We’re going to need two of them in the end, so we can test soldering ESCs onto another board and we can use the one I soldered today once we have perfected the process.

Our 6 inch tube also came in on Wednesday! I put together the tube flanges we had already received, lubricated them, mounted the electronics frame I had made a few weeks before, and put everything together. It looks pretty good! I can finally begin to see the electronics enclosure I’ve spent so much time designing beginning to come together!

Junior Week 07

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week was a mostly mundane week. The Robotics Team did finally name our 2024 ROV, though. It’s name is…. JONA ROV! We couldn’t decide between JOE and TINA, so we made a comprise. (The ROV is not named after the MHS junior Jonah Siegal)

I designed and built a fisheye camera mount for the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3. Wednesday, Matty tried to test it, but something was wrong with the software so he wasn’t able to. The plan is for this camera module to go on the front of JONA ROV inside the electronics tube.

I finally have begun the process of actually making the PCBs, after some last-minute changes, the ESC board has been ordered. We’re starting with just the ESC board, so any issues that might be present on all of the boards I’ve made will only require one set of board to be reordered, instead of all of them. We ordered our boards from JLCPCB.

I’ve begun writing the documentation for 2024. It’s probably my least favorite part of the MATE ROV competition, but I do understand how important it is in the real world, and for future members of Sunk Robotics.

Junior Week 06

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This was a short week, as Monday was Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day.

This week I received a response from Shane, Mr. Christy’s “PCB guy”. He had looked over all of the PCBs we have for our new ROV so far and pointed out some flaws that I would not have noticed myself. For example: wires getting caught on plastic structural clamps of some connectors and connecting the signal-ground pads to the ground-plane. I believe that the signal-ground pads and the power-ground pads are connected inside the ESCs, but better safe than sorry.

I also began modeling the hardware for the new ROV frame. I believe I have a final design for the parts of the frame itself, but I still need to plan out how each part will connect together. I’d kept this in mind when designing it, so I already mostly know how everything will connect, but I still need to actually model all the nuts, bolts, and washers, as well as putting in all the holes for them.

On Thursday, at Mr. Christy’s recommendation, I spoke with Matthew Stricker, a sophomore in the shop, about building some new Tube Cameras for the robotics team. Because we’re building a whole new ROV, but keeping our old one, we need more cameras for it. I could build them myself, but I already have quite a bit to do, so I could use the help. I prepared all of the manufacturing documents he’ll need, but I don’t believe he knows how to use most of the machines the process will use. I would teach him, but the whole point of him doing it is that I’m not… I’m sure he’ll be able to find someone else to teach him. I hope.

Junior Week 05

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week, the primary thing I’ve been working on has been a prototype PCB frame for the Robotics Team’s new ROV.

I laser-cut a bunch or parts and cut some lengths of threaded metal rod. I then assembled everything, which took a while because I needed to thread 44 M3 nuts onto the long threaded rod. This whole process took two days.

Wednesday after school, I taught Miles Hillard, a prospective new member, how to design PCBs in Fusion 360. He had previous PCB design experience, although not with Fusion. He definitely needs more practice, but I believe he will eventually become an adept PCB designer.

Thursday I tested our 4-wire ethernet plan, and I can confirm that only the green and orange twisted pairs are required to 100mb/s ethernet. I made an image to reference so I won’t forget how our CAT 5E cables need to be crimped.

Friday the Robotics & Engineering shop goes on a field trip to Tulip Interfaces, so I will not be able to complete any work that day.

Junior Week 04

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week was a 4-day week, so I got less done this week than I normally would.

I finally finished the plaque for Watts Water, and it looks pretty good! I’m quite disappointed that my CNC engraved idea didn’t work out. I ended up just spray painting the metal sheet and then laser-engraving the text into it. The upside to this method is that I can do solid shapes and logos, instead of just lines.

After I finished up the plaque, I got back to work on the new electronics enclosure. Our new design will hopefully be far cleaner, easier to modify, and will also look a lot cooler. Our main tube (6in diameter) will have a frame with a bunch of slots on it, and a bunch of PCBs will go into each slot and be connected together with as few wires as possible. This week I designed two PCBs: the Power Distribution Board, and the I2C & Power Bus Board.

The Power Distribution Board splits the incoming 12V for use in the two ESC Boards, and for the 12V to 5V converter on the PCB. The Power Distribution Board also has the 12 Channel PWM Controller for the ESCs, as it is the closest board to the ESC boards and the extra space.

The I2C & Power Bus Board has a 6-port I2C bus and a 4-port 5V power bus. This board is not full size, and will go on a clear acrylic piece that fill fit into the electronics frame. This acrylic piece will also hold the Raspberry Pi 4B and a 9-axis IMU.

While writing this blog post I thought of a much better way to do the I2C & Power Bus Board, so I’m gonna completely remake it Friday.

Junior Week 03

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On Monday I finished routing the wooden portion of the Watts Water Plaque. I had to reduce the width by one inch in order to make it fit in the stock we had. I also reduced the length by 1.5 inches so that the aspect ratio would remain the same.

The routing went exceptionally smooth, and was finished quite quickly. I then cleaned everything up and sanded all the surfaces down.

Tuesday I stained the wooden part of the Watts Water Plaque with Light Brown stain. I also started on the metal bit. I plasma cut a rectangle of 1/8in aluminum sheet metal, deburred it, and began polishing it. A combination of Brasso polishing compound, fine steel wool, and the polishing wheel gave the best finish of the (numerous) methods I tested.

Wednesday, I finished up polishing the aluminum sheet, engraved it, and with the help of Ben Wirz, applying some paint and sanding it to make the letters contrast more.

This is mostly what the plaque looked like before the paint treatment.

This is the plaque after the paint. It does look better, but it is highly lighting dependent. In some conditions it looks great, and in some it’s completely unreadable. I am considering remaking the metal portion of the plaque and instead laser-engraving painted aluminum, it might look better.

Junior Week 02

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On Monday I tested out the engraving method I will use for the plaque I’m making for Watts Water Technologies. I used a diamond-drag engraving bit in the Tormach to CNC engrave some text (the words “Lanky Giraffe” were provided by Tanzy). The above engraving involved three engraving passes for each character offset 0.01 inches. The text came out very good and I believe I will continue to use this method for all my future engraving. I also was curious to see what the text would look like when sandblasted. The answer is not too good.

Before facing

After facing

In order to cut the wooden portion of the Watts Gift, I need to use the CNC router. I have had some experience with the machine, but I am definitely not confident with it yet. However, before the router can be used at all this year, the MDF board on it must be flat. It could either be replaced, or it could be faced down so that it’s flat again. I decided to try facing it down, and this involved creating a CNC program to have the router run over the entire board with a 3 inch diameter wood facing bit.

The program did not end up facing the entire board, with ~.25 in of board left over. I didn’t measure or zero the board or machine…. in any precise way, so this was expected. I manually faced the remaining bit by jogging the machine with the spindle active. Once the board was completely flat, I removed all of the old tape and retaped the board with the assistance of Tanzy.

I have written a CAM program to route the wooden part of the Watts Gift, but I haven’t cut it yet (as of Thursday).

Junior Week 01

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week I had two main goals: Fix S.T.E.V.E. ROV and refine the ESC PCB I designed for the Robotics Team’s new ROV. I originally planned on starting to design a power distribution board this week, but I realized that the ESC PCB I had made was in serious need of some cleaning up. My top priority this week was fixing S.T.E.V.E.

It turns out, though, that fixing S.T.E.V.E. wouldn’t take very long. I am proud to say I could give the ROV a shining “It works!” after only five minutes of fixing. The primary reason for this is that our lead programmer’s (and pilot) computer was having “issues”. When we first plugging the ROV in a week ago, we couldn’t connect to it, but it wasn’t because of anything wrong with the ROV. This is because there was nothing wrong with the ROV. I spend all of five minutes plugging it in, scanning it’s IPs, and verifying that everything works perfectly fine. Our programmer couldn’t connect to it because his computer apparently spontaneously breaks and he didn’t realize this was the case.

I spend almost all of Wednesday re-finding some parts on Digikey that I intend to use on the ESC PCB. A while ago I had downloaded some 3D models and have been using them in my PCB design, but I never saved the part ID. Without the part ID, I can’t actually buy these parts, so it’s pretty important. I had to search through Digikey in order to find the exact parts I was using while not knowing the specific details of each component such as Pitch or Contact Finish. I did eventually find the parts, though.

As I said, these parts would be used on the ESC PCB I’ve been working on. This past week, I added the signal connector, which I had not done yet, added groundplane on both sides of the PCB, and moved some on the connectors. The groundplane was a recommendation by Shane, someone introduced by Mr. Christy who is giving me advice on PCB design. The groundplane should hopefully isolate the signal traces from the high-frequency pulsing of the ESC output traces. Without it the signal might have too much interference and it wouldn’t work.

The silkscreen I added is not technically required, but it’s free with PCBWay and it will make my PCBs look almost professional. It will also help with assembly. Fusion 360’s way of doing silkscreens is kind of horrible, as I can’t directly edit the silkscreen of the PCB, I can only edit it for individual parts. I’ll have to come up with a solution to add some text to the PCB that isn’t for a specific part.

Junior Week 00*

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It’s my first week back at school and it only lasted 10 hours. Two days on extended advisory and then a four day weekend. Honestly, I like having a short week and then a long weekend to ease back into school, it makes the transition smoother.

I am now a junior in the Robotics & Engineering vocational shop, but I’ll only spent two periods in it (4 & 5) as I have English 6th period. I would normally have shop three periods (4, 5, 6) but I wanted to take Physics in my junior year, which means I need to drop one period of robotics to fit everything into my schedule.

Because I’m a junior, for robotics I’ll now need to create a website (and here it is) and start filling out goal sheets. I’ve heard goal sheets are…. less than popular, but they don’t sound too bad. I guess I’ll see. My website is a thing that exists now, some of my classmates wanted me to create my own without using WordPress or Wix or other website creation services, but I don’t want to write my own website, honestly.

Sunk Robotics’ first meeting was on Thursday, a promising new member, Miles, made an appearance. He is a freshman that already has experience in programming, 3D modelling, and 3D printing. Hopefully he can become a valuable member of the team. Next week I’ll start fixing our old ROV so that it can be used for practice, but then I’ll begin working on building the electronics for our new ROV.

Projects

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

No cover image available.

Sunk Robotics:

Left-to-Right: Miles Hilliard (‘27), Matthew Harris (’24), Noah Gibson (’24), Franklin Soto-Ortiz (‘24), Aaron BenDaniel (’25), Zachary Bertocchi (’24), Benjamin Wirz (‘25), Scott Campbell (‘25), Benjamin Santanna (‘24), Jonas Wirz (‘27), Timothy Hunt (’27).

JONA ROV, Sunk Robotics’ newest edition to its fleet

I am a founding member of the Medford Robotics Team. Named Sunk Robotics, we participate in the Ranger class of the MATE ROV Competition. The MATE ROV Competition is an international underwater robotics competition that challenges students of all ages to build, operate, and speak about underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). Sunk Robotics participates in the Ranger class, which is for high school-age teams and have advanced to the international level three times (2022, 2023, and 2024).

I primarily help with building and maintaining the hardware of our robot. I worked on the electrical and camera systems for our 2022 & 2023 ROV, S.T.EV.E., and the camera, electrical, and mechanical systems for our 2024 ROV, JONA.

Projects from Sunk Robotics:

2023-2024

JONA ROV Frame:

For our 2023-2024 year, Sunk Robotics decided to build an entirely new ROV Frame. The major reason for this was to increase our thruster count from 6 to 8. The additional thrusters will allow for far greater lift capacity and pitch control.

See posts about the JONA ROV Frame

JONA ROV Electronics Enclosure:

For our 2023-2024 year, the Robotics Team decided to switch from a 4in tube to a 6in tube. Redesigning the frame was the perfect opportunity to do this. Changing the size of our tube required a redesign of our electronics system. We wanted to transition away from a literal wooden plank and instead wanted a cleaner and more professional solution. Our new design features a frame that holds up to 6 custom PCBs. This new design is far cleaner than our previous design, much more reliable, and looks… safer.

See posts about the JONA ROV Electronics Enclosure

Watts Water Plaque:

Our biggest cooperate sponsor, Watts Water Technologies, has continually supported Sunk Robotics, and we felt the need to express our appreciation. I took on the task of designing a gift for them and decided on a plaque that could have text engraved on it.

See posts about the Watts Water Plaque

Tube Camera – The Single Cable:

During our 2022-2023 year, although the Tube Cameras worked well, the way they had two separate wires for each one was a big hassle and a major point of failure. I revised the way they’re connected to the Main Electronics Tube and have combined both 5V power and 100Mbps ethernet into a single CAT 5E cable. The Tube Cameras never utilized the full 1Gbps they were wired with on S.T.E.V.E., so I repurposed the unused twisted pairs into 5V power and GND.

See posts about JONA ROV's Cameras

2022-2023

Tube Camera:

During our 2022-2023 year, we made two major improvements to S.T.E.V.E.: The gripper and the camera system. I focused on cameras for almost the entirety of the year and designed a multitude of cameras, but ultimately we decided one standard camera design was best. I focused my attention on the best design I’d made, which was the Tube Camera. The Bottom Camera was, for many reasons, a bad design, but the worst aspect of it was how long it took to disassemble and reassemble. The fasteners used to attach the face plate took a very long time to put together. This made maintenance very difficult. The Tube Camera, however, utilizes a custom O-ring seal instead of fasteners. This drastically reduced the time it took to put together, and was a major improvement. It was also far smaller, so it could feasibly be mounted facing forward and backward instead of exclusively down. The Tube Camera is still in use on JONA ROV.

2021-2022

Electronics Tray:

I designed the electronics tray for S.T.E.V.E. ROV, which would be used from 2021-2023. The tray contained all of the electronics (other than the external Bottom Camera) for the ROV. Being made from laser-cut 1/4in plywood, it was very adaptable, as new holes could easily be drilled without disassembling the entire thing.

Bottom Camera:

After the 2021 regional, we realized that we needed a bottom-facing camera. I was tasked with making this bottom camera. I was not very experienced and decided to create a waterproof housing around a camera design I’d already made and implemented. This solution was very inefficient and clunky, but it did work.

Light:

During our first year, before we had actually attended any competitions, we weren’t quite sure what the lighting conditions of the pools we’d be competing in would be. We decided to add a light to the front of the ROV so that we’d be able to see in low-light conditions. We quickly realized that we’d only be competing in well-lit environments and decided not to use the light as it could only cause additional problems and we did not require it. This was my first contribution to the Robotics Team.

Micromouse:

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So far in my senior year at MVTHS, my main project has been constructing a Micromouse. Micromice are small maze-solving robots that are placed in a maze, allowed to explore a little bit, and then try to get from the start to the finish as fast as possible. I’m building a half-scale Micromouse, which is, as the name might suggest, half the size of a typical Micromouse. Each cell in the maze it must traverse is 9cmx9cm, which means that the robot must be quite compact and this posed a number of challenges for me.

I have finished the hardware and pathfinding algorithm for the robot, and am currently working on the hardware-interface code and getting it’s movements as precise as possible. The robot has two DC motors, an encoder on each motor, a BNO085 9-axis IMU, and three VL53L0X Time of Flight sensors.

It features an Adafruit QT-PY ESP32-S2 microcontroller, which is completely overkill for this project, but it’s super small and while I did try, I ultimately failed at getting my pathfinding algorithm to run on an ATMEGA328.

See the code for my Micromouse on Github

See posts about my Micromouse

The Sumo Bot Project:

All sophomores in the Robotics & Engineering vocational shop participate in the Sumo Bot Competition. Students are broken up into teams of 1-2 people and they have a few weeks to build a sumo bot to compete. My partner, Tanzerul Azam, and I formed “Team Nestle” and built a sumo bot.

Left-to-right: Scott Campbell ('25), Tanzerul Azam ('25), Nate Matarazzo ('25), Aaron BenDaniel ('25).

All sophomores in the Robotics & Engineering vocational shop are tasked to build lightboxes during the second quarter of their year. I decided to build a wooden ellipsoid lightbox. It has a hexagonal display that features the face of one of my classmates, Tanzerul Azam. The lightbox can be controlled using the switch and potentiometer on the sides.

My lightbox has a variety of display modes:

Solid color (#000000 to #FFFFFF)
Random Color
Rainbow
Strobe

Eccentric Staircase:

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My eccentric staircase was the last project I did in the Robotics & Engineering shop. I wanted to make something that looked interesting, and keeping with the theme I had set, wanted it to be a machining project. I had seen a similar project online and was inspired to make my own.

See posts about my Eccentric Staircase

Tap Follower:

During my Micromouse project, I was getting frustrated with my slow progress and decided to take a break. I chose to start a machining project and decided to build a tap follower.

A tap follower is a tool to help center a thead-cutting tap and apply constant pressure. It makes cutting threads with taps significantly easier.

See posts about my Tap Follower

Machinist’s Jack:

This was a project that I started near the end of my Sophomore year. I designed it and began turning it, but ultimately failed in my attempt. I made my second attempt mid-way through Junior year, and succeed the second time after having learned from my mistakes the first time I attempted this project.

I was suggested the idea to make a Machinist’s Jack by Mr. L after having one would have been helping when milling my Dead Tool Rack. It is a tool to help give additional support to a part when milling it. So far I have only made one of these, but I might make a second in the future.

See posts about the Machinist's Jack

Tool Post Bearing:

After I finished the Tap Follower, I still wanted to continue my break from my Micromouse project and decided to make yet another addition to the machine shop.

This bearing sits between the South Bend Lathe’s tool post and the bearing that holds it down. It eliminates friction between the two and without it, the tool post rotates out of alignment when tightening it down. This bearing makes aligning the tool post a significantly faster task and a lot less frustrating.

Ben Wirz recommended this project to me.

Metal Head:

Near the end of my sophomore year in the Robotics & Engineering shop, I wanted to learn more about our Tormach PCNC 1100 4th axis extension. I decided that I wanted to mill a complex 3D object and settled on a portrait bust of a human head.

Metal Die:

Before I started on my Metal Head project, one of my Robotics teachers, Noah Lewkowitz (Mr. L) asked me if I wanted to finish a project he had started. Mr. L had begun to work on a metal six-sided die, and I decided to finish it. The die honestly isn’t that great and I have a few modifications I would make if I milled another one, but at the moment I do not have plans to make another one. Maybe I’ll eventually mill a whole RPG dice set, but that’s a plan for the future.

Water Jet Guide

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Here is the link to my Water Jet Guide:

Google Slides: OMAX 2626 JET MACHINING CENTER Guide

PDF: OMAX 2626 JET MACHINING CENTER Guide