Week of 11/17 - 11/20

This week, Kim, Bella, and I continued working on the map for the Eco League project. We designed the signs last week to mark milestones and landmarks on the route, consisting of the total distance travelled by members of the Eco League. We glued down all the signs to the board to keep them in place on the board when we sealed it. After the signs had dried in place, we sprayed the board with a Mod Podge spray that sealed the signs on the board. This sealant gives the sign a finished look and should prevent the signs from falling off while keeping them from getting dusty.

The next day, I returned to work on the Word Clock by making the PCB which has broken previously. Since Kim already had a file ready to go for the PCB to be milled, I was able to just mill that file. However, my attempts at this during the first few times were very unsuccessful. The first time I tried milling it, in the setup process, while I was finding the stock size of the board, the bit broke because it moved too close to the milling bed. I replaced the bit and reattempted the cut, and the process itself went fine, but when I took the PCB out of the mill, I realized the bit had broken while milling, but without any warning from the software. Because of this, it stopped actually cutting anything close to the end of the cut, leaving pads with uncut holes, making it an unusable board. I think the issue here was that there might have been some gunk or debris underneath the board before I cut it, causing the sensitive machine to mess up the cut.

The next day, I continued having trouble with the mill, but these challenges were less detrimental. On this third cut, everything went fine until it got to the outline of the board. It cut through one side of the board and left the rest, as the bit had broken again. I was able to continue the cut by replacing the board and only cutting out the outline. This one finally worked, meaning I had a usable PCB for the word clock. Kim directed me to the parts I needed for the PCB, and I was able to solder all the components onto the board easily. Now, we have to test the board to see if it gets power and is able to power the word clock correctly.