Week 2: Never Ending Wires

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This week I started in-person work at Bent River Machine. I spent most of my time running wires for a controller for one of their projects with a solar cell laminator for Amazon. It was surprisingly really fun to figure out where they all go from just the schematics, although I did encounter some tedium.

Laminator Control Panel

 

There were a couple of times where I had to reroute groups of wires, or accidentally cut some. The biggest struggle was trying to label them. For some reason, I just kept making typos and mislabelling wires. After I finally thought I had labeled everything correctly, I looked at my reference and realized both sides of the wires had to be labeled, and I was back to square one. I really enjoyed the more independent work, as I felt very accomplished every time I worked something out on my own.

 

Everybody at Bent River Machine seems very knowledgeable in their field, and they’re all willing to help me with anything I need, which is relieving because at first, I was worried that I would be a burden to their team, though it is scary to ask them for help when they are so hard at work on their own projects. I was originally very intimidated by the schematics and the large board with a mess of wires attached, but I’m now pretty confident in being able to wire the next couple, hopefully much faster than the ones I have so far. They also gave me a small project to try to work out. somehow, two conveyors have mounting points that don’t line up as they should, and I will try to design a bracket to mount them.

Bracket To Design

 

Overall, I am even more excited for what the rest of my project holds, but more than anything I am amazed and impressed with Bent River’s process in pulling a large project together so efficiently, and everybody’s input to move things along.

 

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Comments:

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    selene_r
    Hi Nathan! Having to restart something after completing it can be very infuriating, so good job on having the patience to try again. It is AMAZING that they gave you your very own small project, I can't wait to see how designing a bracket will go! :)
    payton_b
    Hi Nathan! This seems super interesting. I have always thought about building things like this but deciding that it would just be too time-consuming just to learn where to start. I am very impressed with how it is going so far. I hope it is fun and I can't wait to see what you have to say next time!
    edward_a
    I'm amazed to hear that you're quickly finding you're way and understanding more and more about your engineering project. When you're making the wire, is it by hand or by machine?

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