Hello everyone, my name is Andrew Kistler, and I am spending my summer in Golden Colorado at Colorado School of Mines. For the next seven weeks, I will be working in the M3 Robotics lab with Dr. Andrew Petruska as well as some graduate and undergraduate students.
I can’t believe this was my final week. Time has really flown by. This internship has been a truly incredible experience! I’ve learned so much, and I wish I could stay longer.
This week was fairly uneventful as we spent the majority of our time painting the wooden parts of the gantry with flame retardant paint. OSHA was against there being exposed wood as it was a fire hazard and would cause issues with smoke in the case of a fire. So we had to spend the time disassembling the gantry and painting the wood.
Wood after painting
After the wood was fully painted, we then had to reassemble the gantry. Surprisingly, this took only two days to do, which was quite impressive considering that it previously took well over a week to assemble. The assembly also involved using Loctite on every fastener. Loctite is basically superglue for fasteners so it ensures that the bolts won’t come loose over time or through vibrations as the gantry moves. We had hoped to have the gantry system done and ready for a test before I left, but we unfortunately ran out of time.
Gantry after reassembly
Outside of gantry related things, we brought the rover down to the EMI to the smaller prototype test bed. While it was there, we worked on getting the rover’s dozer blade functioning. Unfortunately, the actuators that move the dozer blade weren’t designed to keep the super fine regolith dust from getting into the component. Because of this, they no longer function, but the lab is going to buy new actuators that will be able to handle the super fine dust.
Rover in small testbed
I didn’t really have time to do anything outside the internship, but I did get to sign my name on the gantry before I left. It felt super cool to sign the gantry as people will be able to see that I was a contributor to its construction.
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