Monday, March 21, 2011

Minor explosion causes significant rework


You may have noticed that I've not posted for a while. Aside from an actual job that pays, I had a significant issue with the machine. I'd post pictures of what I'm about to describe but I'm not at my house and don't feel like waiting. Instead, here's picks of the chick working on... most just looking crazy while she cuts the mountings for her 3d light cube.

The explosion on the machine was more of a loud pop and some sparks. Never a good sign. In the end, it looks like one of the coils was touching the metal casing. I burned through it's enamel and took the voltage on the entire case up to 400V. When a wire from the optical sensors also touched the case, it fried about every piece of circuity in the device. Ever firing circuit, the computer, all the optical sensors. The only thing that survived was the charger (which is invincible as far as I can tell).

After a total catastrophe like that, one might as well rework the entire thing. I drew up new printed firing circuits. I made a new mount for the computer, I changed all but the very first accelerator magnet to be computer controlled, and finally I'm using shielded wire for all the sensors. Never again will I worry about EM noise, I'm shielding fucking everything.

As of yesterday, I finally have 4 accelerator gates working again. The machine was back up to 51m/s. This is about on-par with where we used to be. And of course now that I've enabled more control over certain parts and added EM protection, I think it'll be far more sustainable to expand.

1 comment:

  1. Babe, power tools, wires, amazon box and whipping cream. You live in heaven, man!

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