Week of 2/9 - 2/13

This week, Bella, Kim, and I made a lot of progress on the manufacturing of the Word Clock.

Monday

On Monday, we began taking off all the letter blocks on the original Word Clock board to get the pieces ready to move onto the big board once it was prepared. In total, we have 121 blocks to take out of the board. On Monday, we got one row done, complete with taping and labeling the individual blocks.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, we were able to cut out all of the holes in the new board on the router. Kim and I helped start the machine with Bella by changing the drill bit with her. While Bella watched the router cut to ensure nothing went wrong, Kim and I continued to undo the blocks on the old board. We got about 2 and a half rows done, completed with taping and labeling the blocks again.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, we worked to get the pieces off the router and get it cleaned up for future use. We first broke off all the tabs that held the pieces in place on the router. I used an electric sander to sand the pocket of the big piece with all the LED holes while it was still in place on the router. The sander couldn't get to the edges of the pocket. so we had to sand that by hand later on. After the other pieces were broken out of the wood, I sanded the edges and faces of all the pieces so we could assemble them the next day. After all the sanding was done, we vacuumed and swept up all the dust. After this, we removed the wood from the router and cleaned the rest of the way.

Thursday

On Thursday, Bella and I assembled all the pieces of the word clock frame. We got the top, sides, and bottom attached to the board with the brackets Bella had printed previously. This took a long time because it was very difficult to align all the pieces while we drilled in the brackets. We were able to get this done on Thursday, along with sanding the pieces of the wood that the sander couldn't reach.