First Blog Back! (Week of 9/2)
- vvaldezmelgar
- Sep 4
- 3 min read
Hello! Welcome to my first blog post of senior year! Most of this week was simple house-keeping tasks that needed to be complete to get the shop in working order for the year.
There a lot of changes to the school year, one being an extended school day which leads to the bell schedule being changed. The changing in schedules meant that our Stoplight was now outdated and needed to be updated. I took on the task as I wanted to get back into the swing of coding, and it wasn't that bad. I had to grab the old code from a former shop-student, Clark's GitHub. After taking a bit to find the new schedule and get a basic understanding of the code, updating the bell-schedule inside the code didn't take long at all. Uploading the code is a different story in general, I could get it back on GitHub but getting it on the Stoplight itself would be tricky. After Mr.Christy looked into the code for a day, he told me that we needed to change the entire board of the Stoplight and also that we need to update the older Stoplight up in electrical. Since I'm not great at creating or updating boards(see the 7 failed boards for the Journal), fellow classmate Alex Pilika offered to help with the Stoplight.
While Alex works on the Spotlight boards, I decided to work on another house-keeping task. We have two laser-cutters in the Shop and while the larger one was up and running, no-one set up the smaller one. So, I decided to set it up and Mr.Christy wanted me to create a guide for the smaller laser-cutter as no-one really knows how to use it. This little task took all of Wednesday due to me not really knowing how to use it. I couldn't get a file to the laser-cutter from it's designated computer. After a while, with Mr.L helping me, a bit of digging on the internet to make sure the IP address was correct, we found out that; the computer wasn't connecting to the Ethernet, and that the Ethernet cord connecting the Laser-Cutter to the computer wasn't working. After fixing the Ethernet and replacing the old cord, everything started working perfectly. Mr.L gave me a quick run-down on what to do even you do have a job on the small laser-cutter. Writing out the guide didn't take long, as I was taking notes while trying to set it up.
The following day, Mr.Christy needed someone to find a Umass Amherst Pennart to hang on our Alumni wall which I decided to do. That didn't take long, around 20 minutes max. I couldn't do anymore work on the Stoplight while Alex was working, so I started on a small project that would let me learn how to use one of the mills in Machine Shop. I was going to buy some new rings, but I wanted to make them in shop instead since it's free and keeps me busy. Some quick measurements of my fingers and spiny ring allowed me to turn out a quick model in CAD. I turned that model into a drawing in Fusion, making sure all the measurements were there, and asked Mr.L for help. He had some Sophomores using the Turning Mill for a project, so I couldn't use it Thursday but he told me that he would help me tomorrow. I plan on making and finishing the rings Friday as those shouldn't take longer than a day, and trying to do more work(well, what I can) on the Stoplight as that turned into a much bigger project.
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