Week 23 - ngetachew/Portfolio GitHub Wiki

In the beginning of this week, me and one of my partners made wires for the ODrive Controller on the Conference Sand Table. The controller takes a fair amount of current, so the wires we used are significantly thicker than those used on other projects. This made the soldering process significantly harder, as the solder wouldn't heat up as fast as the rubber around the wire, bubbled up and melted. Nevertheless, we eventually got the wires tinned and installed with the right connectors for the ODrive. The way we had to solder the connectors was different than normal: I placed it in a clip and shoved the soldering iron down the hole where the wire goes while my partner shoved solder through a side hole. Once the amount of solder in the hole was sufficient, I quickly swapped the iron and the end of the wire, allowing the solder to dry around it. This was a challenging process but we accomplished our goal.

After the wires were in the motor controller, we had to mount it to the arm of the Sand Table. The problem we found was that none of the holes on the arm lined up with the attachment plate, and some of them weren't even tapped all the way. It took about a day for the manufacturing team to get us the correct holes(and it took them two attempts). During this time, me and one of my partners sorted through the massive array of screws lying around our work space and tided things. However once it was back, we installed it and turned the Conference Sand Table on for the first time, and it worked!