It's Only the Beginning

Cristina and I arrived at the DDI Lab at 3:30 greeted by Alex who informed us that there were endstops that needed soldering. Cristina jumped at the chance to do some soldering. She was a novice in the true sense of the word when it came to soldering. Alex was able to walk her through the process, but it was difficult for her to grasp. She asked Alex to physically show her how to solder. With some practice I think Cristina could solder. There seems to be a need for “the right touch”, knowing a good ratio of electronics solder and heat/pressure/timing.

I put neodymium magnets into the wooden building platform and the Y Stage pieces using the allen wrench and pushed the magnets into square holes within the pieces. The magnets are cube shaped and golden in color. Not on the “shopping list” was super glue. It is used to keep the magnet in the holes.

Alex has assigned Cristina to pull parts together in an organized fashion; gathering the materials of certain parts of the Makerbot. The pieces are laser cut onto wooden boards and we take them apart by pulling them up from the board, like a jigsaw puzzle.

As I was helping Cristina gather the materials, we were having a hard time distinguishing the difference between the different nuts and bolts. Would be great to have them all labeled without having the time consuming task of looking it up online.

Alex gave me the assignment of putting the body together. I used the wiki for instructions and the parts list. The parts of the pictures list were different and only afterward did I read the note that stated the pictures were from an earlier batch and may be different. We marked the nuts and bolts bags, because they were not clearly marked.