Month: January 2020

This quarter I have learned so much about atoms, circuits, power tools, and so much more. We have done a bunch of projects this year we have made

Flashlights, switches,  & necklace charms.

Before technology I vaguely knew how to make a simple circuit. After making switches and flashlights I now know how to make them and why they work.

These photos are of two angles of the technology room, (and people ”posing” for the camera.) They  were taken during lunch recess, where my friends and I go for lunch to do fun crafts that we don’t get to do in class. 

In tech this year we used tools that I didn’t even know existed. We used drill presses, soldering  irons, and jigsaws. I’m not going to lie, l I was scared of all of them my first time using them, but after  using them once I was no longer scared, but I was cautious. I have had so much fun in tech this quarter and I’m sad that it ends soon. 😭😭😭

My flashlight in action!

This is a picture  and video of my switch completed! After putting the switch together I had the option to decorate.  We could use pretty much anything: markers, pompoms, or gems. At first I didn’t want to decorate it because I was worried that I would mess up, in the end I decided to decorate it very simply. I just put my name going down the side in big letters & I put some pipe cleaners on it. I am happy with how it turned out.  I am honestly really proud of myself, last quarter I saw my friend’s flashlight and never thought I could make anything like that. I am not going to say I had an easy time making this, it was definitely a challenge to make.  I had a lot  of obstacles along they way including an incorrect measurement, and a messed up circuit, but it was worth it.

Switch video

That is a video of my circuit in action. In order to get the pieces to stick together we had to solder them together using a wire and a soldering iron which is INCREDIBLY hot! Soldering this was much harder than soldering charms (see post #3.) This time there was a specific process we used:

1. Solder negative wire 1 to battery,
2. Solder that wire to your switch
3. Solder your other negative wire (#2) to the switch
4. Solder negative wire #2 to the LED light
5.  Solder your positive wire to the LED light
6.  Solder your positive wire to your battery

You have a circuit!

I had a lot of trouble doing this, my first time I thought I melted the switch so I would have to de-solder the wires, but when Mr.Calvert came to give me a new switch he informed me that that was not problem. The real problem was that I had soldered the negative wire to the positive side of the LED and vise-versa! So to fix this problem I de-soldered the wires and soldered them to the correct sides.

 

In order to get the flashlight working we needed wires. The first thing we did was draw the wires in our mechanical sketch. We had to keep in mind that the wires needed to be able to have a light, a switch, and the battery needed to be in a place where it could be switched. I chose to connect them so my light is at the top, my switch is in the middle, and my battery is at the bottom ( like how the picture is) After that we used special measuring wires to calculate how long our wires needed to be. After we figured it out we cut them with red and black wires, (one red; positive & two black; negative.)  When cutting our wires we made sure to add an inch to each wire so we could strip them. Stripping them takes off the conductivity blocker and makes it easier to solder them. After we stripped them we bent them. The reason we bended them was so we could hook them onto the piece we needed to solder it to.

We were building our flashlights we had certain shapes to work with. We had…

– 90˚ angle pipes, 45˚ angle pipes, double 90˚ angle pipes (two connected), round edged end pieces (bottom of the picture), end pieces with straight sides (top of the photo)

And lastly we could use a connecting piece, but we did not get it as easily. We had to measure the one drawn in our mechanical sketches and we had to measure it out on a large pipe and cut it with a saw. In this part I ran into a problem. I was able to fit it in the box that it had to fit in, but it didn’t fit on my page, at first it’s was no big deal, but as the steps got more complicated, it became more of a problem. Eventually I was able to solve the problem, but I spent mush more time on the steps than I had planned to.

  Mechanical drawing isn’t like regular drawing. It’s much harder and much more precise. When you are mechanical sketching something you need to make sure your being accurate. For example in this photo I used a 4” by 2” object, in order to figure that out I had to measure it. As you can probably tell by the photo that drawing is not drawn to size, but it is drawn to scale. Each one of those cubes is equal to 0.25 of an inch. Where it says 4” there are sixteen squares (4 x 4 = 16) and where it says 2” there are eight squares. (2×4=8) The reason we draw things to scale is so anyone can look at it and figure out exactly what you want.