Anyway, the past week's work has been on fabricating a second, identical heat plate. Previously, when only one plate was used to heat the AR coats, there was some warping and deformation. Instead of having to flip the AR screen like pancakes, we can use two heat plates and bake the AR screen like waffles.
Drilling and tapping the holes for the power resistors was quite the excursion. We headed over to the SAE shop to use the drill press. Of course, using the no. 43 drill bit, which is tiny, I broke a couple. So we'll have to finish the holes sometime next week when the new bits come in. While I made the holes, Ross had the time of his life trying out the racing simulator. Who says the lab buddy-system has to be a hassle?
In tapping/threading these holes, I committed the amateur mistake of going too fast. I broke two taps in about ten holes. But I managed to get one out. I had only one left, so I went much slower; thread in, thread out, then thread in, then thread out, and so on. With that all done, I applied some silicone vacuum grease to the base of the resistors, and screwed them in. Then came the slow, laborious task of soldering each one in parallel and covering the terminals with heat shrink. It's a mundane task, but to quote Ross, "It's good for the soul," or, "It's like racing around the track, you've got to concentrate." After some time, I become less conscious of the soldering at hand, and more lost in my own thoughts. I lose track of time. Oh, the intrigue of soldering.
The cheap PI temperature controller and fancy LM35 temperature sensors also came in this past week. So while waiting for the new 4-40 tap and drill sets to come in, I should be playing around with relays and optocouplers, and learning about multiplexing for the next step in this project.
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