Sunday, April 16, 2017

Nick Polega Week 13

Nick Polega Week 13

1. Provide the updated computer drawing for your individual RG setup.

2. Explain your setup.
My setup begins with a weight being lifted off of a button, which will start my circuit. Once the circuit is receiving power, a 555 timer will begin pulsing. I made its pulses very very short because I want the motor to spin the arm like an analog clock would. The pulse signals from the 555 get amplified by the non-inverting op amp to about 9 V. This signal goes to the emitter of a transistor. This all causes the motor/analog clock to take about 6 or 7 pulses (or ticks) per 1 revolution. Also attached the the transistor is a photocell at its base with a flashlight mounted above it. While the photoresistor is covered the motor spins fast enough to knock over dominoes but not fast enough to lift the weight. Once the dominoes are knocked off the edge of the table, The base of the transistor has a higher current, therefore so does the emitter. This causes the clock/motor to spin much faster and smoothly. This will lift a weight off of a button which will start Mary's circuit.
3. Provide photos of the circuit and setup.





4. Provide at least 2 new videos of your setup in action, one being a failed attempt.




This was my one of my many failed attempts. The string got caught in the gears that turn the motor, causing it to bind up.



This was my most successful attempt. As you can see, The motor doesn't really have enough power to lift the weight. I am working on a solution for this now.

5. What failures did you have? How did you overcome them?
One of the failures I am currently working to overcome is that my motor will not lift the weight up as high as I want it to. It lifts it a little bit, but I would like my circuit to work nearly 100% of the time before the class demo. I will try to overcome this by using less string and maybe greasing up the pulley. This leads me to my next obstacle, which is getting the circuit (especially the mechanical parts) to be sturdy and work 100% of the time. I am overcoming this my redesigning aspects I feel are weak and also doing a bunch of test runs. The final obstacle will be getting my group's/the class' circuit to all run smoothly. The whole class is in the process of this currently but it seems as if collaboration is key. Something else worth mentioning, this is my 4th circuit I've designed. I had trouble the last couple weeks coming up with a direction that would be sufficient to the rubric and also work well. After class on Friday, Alec stayed a couple hours afterwards to help me figure something out. I am happy my design now.

3 comments:

  1. I cannot judge the circuit and mechanical complexities from the blog. Drawing looks fine. We need to talk tomorrow during the demo.

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  2. I like the GR we have some similar idea. I think you have to add another mechanical part to make your GR more complex.
    Good job

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  3. Your set up looks nice, however I can not tell if it would be reliable or not, let alone where to start to make it more so. As for complexity, I feel that the electrical side is somewhat lacking.

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