3/9 - 3/13

This week, me, Kim, and Jaspreet were able to get a lot done for the word clock. On Monday, We got the final coat of wood finisher added to the frame. The day was short for me because we had gym and I had to make up a quiz for another class, but while I was gone, Kim and Jaspreet were able to get some of the letter blocks screwed into the board.

On Tuesday, I spent some of my time working with Kim and Jaspreet on getting the letter blocks screwed in. The word clock is 12x11 blocks, so there's a total of over 120 blocks to put in, which each have four screws. It was a very tedious and time consuming process. The rest of my time was spent researching different methods for hanging the clock up. I started by researching a suggestion Mr. L gave me last week, which was french cleats.

Here's an example of what a french cleat could look like. They don't always look like this, and they're not always metal, but this is closest to what we would probably be using for the word clock since it's so large.

On Wednesday, we finally got all of the letter blocks screwed in. It took us all three periods because there were so many. I also got the chance to ask Mr. L about what he thought about the french cleats and what material to use. When we found out where Mr. Christy wanted to hang it, he proposed that instead of the french cleats, we could maybe use a very heavy-duty metal wire and hook to hang it. However, he also suggested we visit the carpentry shop to get their opinion on what we should do and to see if they have any better ideas for it.

On Thursday, we tested out the final product by plugging it in with the power supply and testing out the PCB to make sure the code was still functioning correctly. We also took the time to tighten all of he letter blocks from the back, to ensure that they wouldn't fall out. Some of the nuts were being blocked by the backplate, so we had to remove the backplate for a little so that we could reach the nuts underneath and tighten them.