Hello everyone! This week was a very eventful and exciting week at the Lab and for Baen and I. This was the first week we didn’t see our parents and technically fully live on our own.
Monday was an exciting day in the lab. In the morning, I sat through one of their SPRITE meetings and I got to speak up in the meeting. I talked about what me and Baen were working on and they provided feedback on what I can do better. One of my co-workers, Jack, gave me two of the internal pieces to our Flat-sat and we could begin the process of making our CAD project come to life. I also learned how to super clean items practicing with the Flat-sat. It is such a long process. But if it is going to space, they have to be completely cleaned because even an oily finger print can completely ruin a mission. In the afternoon, I began the process of building the Flat-sat.
Inserting what we could into the flatsat.
Tuesday, I started to work on cutting out the stencil that I designed last week for the epoxy glue. We needed to complete a special training to gain access to the lab to use that laser cutter. When inside, they had multiple cool gadgets including an optical comparator. I used this tool to check the accuracy of the cut on our stencil. For the rest of the day, Baen and I spent our time in this lab attempting to get the perfect laser cut edge settings so that we wouldn’t mess up the actual stencil.
On Wednesday, we finally got to see if our calculations were correct and use the stencil to put glue on a piece of glass. We used glass to measure the diameter of the circles after fully compressed and to make sure that the glue doesn’t touch. The glue not touching is important because we use two types of glue and if they touch it could ruin the bond. From then, we had to wait 24 hours for the glue to settle and expand to the maximum possible.
Putting weight on glue so it could expand.
Thursday, we didn’t do much besides take measurements on the epoxy expansion as well as view the epoxy under a microscope.
Friday, I created a power point so that I could display our step by step process and the results in a meeting later that day. We met with another scientific group working on a different Cube-sat and they showed us how they stuck their solar panels to the circuit board. We showed how we did, and they gave us strong feedback.
The powerpoint I created to present at a meeting.
For fun this week, we got to see five of our friends that were in town. We all went out to eat twice and went to this awesome rope swing in Boulder. I also finished my book that I started at the beginning of the internship. This week has been amazing and I cannot wait to see what next week brings!
Grocery store parking lot…
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