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.