Some more progress...
1. Our potential funding source is likely to find us an advisor and facility too. So while the guy goes around talking to his colleagues about our project...
2. Took apart the controller in school. It was really heavy, as I mentioned; and I had to carry it home. My friend offered help but I rejected it - part of my Antarctic expedition training (I'm embarking on a journey to the south pole by October 2012), I said. The sleds for polar expeditions usually weigh in excess of 200kg, though they have wind to do a lot of the work for them.
(...I wasn't halfway out of school before I regretted it.)
Good news: The switch wasn't at 230Vac, as I had wrongly assumed it to be. It was a wise choice not to test the unit earlier on.
The switch took some finding... there were various candidates: mysterious numbered dials, a circular dial potentiometer, and a lot of weird stuff here and there. Since we didn't have a manual, it was up to my superior eyesight to pick off the internal selector switch (pictured below beside the big blue capacitor).
1. Our potential funding source is likely to find us an advisor and facility too. So while the guy goes around talking to his colleagues about our project...
2. Took apart the controller in school. It was really heavy, as I mentioned; and I had to carry it home. My friend offered help but I rejected it - part of my Antarctic expedition training (I'm embarking on a journey to the south pole by October 2012), I said. The sleds for polar expeditions usually weigh in excess of 200kg, though they have wind to do a lot of the work for them.
(...I wasn't halfway out of school before I regretted it.)
Good news: The switch wasn't at 230Vac, as I had wrongly assumed it to be. It was a wise choice not to test the unit earlier on.
The switch took some finding... there were various candidates: mysterious numbered dials, a circular dial potentiometer, and a lot of weird stuff here and there. Since we didn't have a manual, it was up to my superior eyesight to pick off the internal selector switch (pictured below beside the big blue capacitor).
Sprague capacitors... very high quality stuff. This one is rather big for a small circuit board: it would be a really loud explosion if I overloaded it. (Sprague Electric Company developed the first tantalum capacitors and remain the leading manufacturer. I wasn't aware of the chemical properties of tantalum before this.) Didn't need a multimeter to get it done, fortunately - the switch was a simple thing labelled "110" and not a triode. With the Phillips head screwdriver we had used to take apart the unit, my team mate confidently yanked it to the "230" position before I even gave him the go ahead - a smooth 'click' confirmed that we were on the right track.
Bad news: The cover plate wasn't in shape. On sliding opening the unit, my team mate broke off a transformer [edit: relay switch] (plastic cap removed below; there's a matching transformer [edit: relay switch] that is next to it to show the state it should have been in - circled in green).
Waited till the end of the day to borrow a soldering iron from the school robotics lab. But our robotics lab actually hadn't kept stock of its soldering flux for months! For a top high school that hosted the national robotics challenge or whatever you call it, that is rather sad. So no one had to use solder for the whole year? What the hell.
We tried to push the twisted pins back in place under the heat of the soldering iron, but it wasn't successful. Varian is really where you should get your vacuum equipment, because all of it was machine-installed - isn't easy to fix.
My classmate burnt through some of the insulated wire in the process... But I confirmed that the bare wire was still in good connection - we just need some insulating tape to patch up the wire. (see the circled region)
Bad news: The cover plate wasn't in shape. On sliding opening the unit, my team mate broke off a transformer [edit: relay switch] (plastic cap removed below; there's a matching transformer [edit: relay switch] that is next to it to show the state it should have been in - circled in green).
Waited till the end of the day to borrow a soldering iron from the school robotics lab. But our robotics lab actually hadn't kept stock of its soldering flux for months! For a top high school that hosted the national robotics challenge or whatever you call it, that is rather sad. So no one had to use solder for the whole year? What the hell.
We tried to push the twisted pins back in place under the heat of the soldering iron, but it wasn't successful. Varian is really where you should get your vacuum equipment, because all of it was machine-installed - isn't easy to fix.
My classmate burnt through some of the insulated wire in the process... But I confirmed that the bare wire was still in good connection - we just need some insulating tape to patch up the wire. (see the circled region)
Clockwise from top left: intact relay switch, broken relay switch and burnt insulation.Looks like we do need the soldering flux after all. I saw that we needed a pair of needle nose pliers - good thing I bought it on foresight right before the project started.
So we'll get it and do this again in school tomorrow.
So we'll get it and do this again in school tomorrow.
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