Keegan Heaton | Aerospace Machinist | Week II

I began the week brainstorming personal projects that I would work on in my spare time. I was tasked with doing the entire process from scratch and using physical objects and my mentors as resources. I had decided to make a fidget that would go on my keychain! There would be a small gear conversion in a 2.5″ by 4.5″ box that you could interchange and look at. Nate, one of my mentors, helped me a lot in the beginning by showing me small tricks and shortcuts for modeling my idea. I worked this Monday and Tuesday while helping with other important work.

On Tuesday,I began making the gear box’s body and lid you could see through. A cool simulation you can do with SolidWorks is physical dynamics testing. This gives each object in the file a direct area and contact surface which other objects can influence. Using this, I was able to test whether the gear ratios I used were correct. I didn’t use complex gear ratios and kept in 1:2 and 1:4 ratio types. This means for every 1 revolution of gear, the corresponding gear is influenced and makes 2 revolutions. This is done by the number of teeth, the points that stick out of the gear, and the pitch of the gear. I haven’t understood what pitch means yet but it influences the area and volume of the gear.

On Wednesday, I renewed my hatred for the smell of pumpkin guts by cleaning the coolant tanks of a band saw and CNC machine. Both of the tanks weren’t as big as last week’s cleaning, but they smelled just as bad and made a bigger mess than we thought.  The coolant is an antibacterial substance that you mix with water to create a chemical reaction and maintain proper temperatures for machining metal. some bacteria still grow, even in the antibacterial, and create the smell of pumpkin guts.

Thursday was a super special day! I got to help repair a sliding door to a LIDAR observation unit.  The sliding door had incorrect wheel positioning and created large amounts of tension between the wheel and the metal surrounding it. The wheel was rubbing up into the metal and stopping it from moving. To fix this, we just had to re-direct the wheels and oil the tracks it traveled across. The whole reason the wheels ended up creating tension was that they rubbed against the walls of its track. After fixing the door, the researchers showed me the laser unit and how it collected data. The unit shot a laser into the air and reflected back into a telescope. The unit would then count the amount of returned light particles and researchers could use that data to estimate the concentration of different elements. I’m unsure now whether they collected data for iron concentrations or some other metal.

On Friday, I worked on my personal project and helped film introduction videos for the next semester’s freshman class. We went over the location of basic shop tools and how they should be used. I didn’t make much progress on my personal project, but I learned important steps to minimize the trial and error needed. One of the things we used was the scaling tool. I had rearranged my gear conversion and it ended up being too big. So, we had to scale the body and lid of the gear box to compensate for the increase in size. That day, everyone had left a little early but I continued to work and study on SolidWorks.

During the weekend, I transferred from the place I was living to temporary housing with my mom’s friend and had a blast with them! On Sunday, we went to the Starhouse for a solstice party and to celebrate Juneteenth and Father’s day. The Starhouse was enveloped in forest. I hung out with Amanda’s, my moms friend, sons who are around my age. After getting home, we celebrated Father’s day and gifted the father, Warren, from both the sons and daughters.