This week began with nothing on Monday and Tuesday. On both days, we were waiting for the maintenance crews to polish the floors. We had to put everything on the tables Friday of last week and wait for them before we could resume preparing for the next semester. We spent a lot of the time talking about games and video editing since Nate was working on a film with other creators. He created a prop bone chopper knife and a pressured blood bag to spray on command. We talked to waste time and wait for the maintenance crew. Funny enough, the maintenance crew never came and Nate had to email one of the personnel about whether or not we could put everything back. Since they hadn’t responded to that, we decided late on Tuesday to return everything to their original places. Everyone in the shop wasn’t too happy about the situation since it had slowed the tempo and forced us to idle for hours.
On Wednesday, I started creating the Graphite gaskets for one of the first-year team projects. We used these for the thruster test last week! The sheet of graphite is a clay-graphite mixture with a steel mesh inside. To cut the material, we had to use tin cutters and an industrial hole puncher to create the overall shape we needed for the thrusters. The whole point of these gaskets is to take high-pressure loads and protect against excess heat expansion. Since graphite has a high heat tolerance, it is used a lot in the rocket industry. Shae and I worked on cutting these gaskets for four hours straight. We cut 72 graphite gaskets by optimizing the space on each sheet. we couldn’t stand after we finished because of how long we were moving around.
On Thursday, We began making these graphite exhaust inserts which channeled all the exhaust fumes and pressure to one point. This part is incredibly important to make sure it creates thrust and doesn’t explode. Since it’s important, we used the lathes to be as precise as possible. If it was larger or smaller by 0.5 inches then it can’t be used. Additionally, each graphite insert took around 2 hours of work and we only have to make around 10. The entire process of making these inserts is arduous and suffocating. You have to wear PPE and keep a vacuum close to collect all the particulates created. Additionally, you have to stand while reading the coordinates monitor to make sure you don’t go over the limit and ruin the part. We only finished 2 graphite inserts with both me and Shae working at separate lathes.
On Friday, I went to help family friends move out and into a new house. They were moving into Denver from Longmont and I helped them finish up cleaning and moving boxes. I helped them Friday into Saturday morning packing up the last bits of belongings before heading to their new house at 2 in the morning. I had tons of fun helping them pack even though the work was long and hard.
There are no comments published yet.