April 4 and 5, 2015
We had a VERY productive weekend, meeting both Saturday and Sunday. It looks like we’re in good shape for being ready for the Discovery Channel visit on April 18.
Sammy and Thelonious mounted the leg sensors:
It was “build cables day” for Gabriel. Cable after cable after cable…
The valves (the dark boxes) and the drivers (the smaller, lighter colored boxes used to provide current to the valves) came in from Enfield:
Ed and Joseph attached the host fittings to the valves
Then they figured out how the valves would be mounted on the suit and connected the pneumatic hose that runs from the valves to the cylinders. The valves are just clamped in place until we get some threaded rod to mount them permanently:
Here’s the splitter used to divide the air from the compressor into the 8 streams needed for the cylinders:
Other views of the suit with the valves and hoses. It’s starting to look AWESOME!
The team T-shirt design was also finalized. We just have to order them now.
Sammy and Thelonious did a run to OSH to buy some bolts and and a new blade for the metal cross-cut saw. We’ve cut so much steel we completely wore down the original blade. Here’s a comparison between the new blade and the used one:
On Sunday Connor finished the joystick mounts and cables. They’re all ready to connect to the control boards:
Cole finished building and testing the four control boards:
Thelonious and Tony attached the drivers to the bottom of a shelf that will also hold the control boards. Taping the drivers in place on a partially transparent sheet of acrylic so that the exact position of the mounting holes can be determined:
Screwing the drivers to the acrylic:
After attaching the drivers. The next step is to bolt the acrylic to the metal shelf and then mount the control boards to the top of the shelf:
Next week we’ll mount the valves, control boards, and drivers to the suit, and we’ll test various subsystems in preparation for the full system test on the 18th.