Weekly Reports from Student High Altitude Launch and Payload Teams

Week 8: July 23 – 27, 2007

Week 8 was spent constructing the payload.  The machining room was used to make some of the parts that we needed.

 A sheet of aluminum was bent in two places and holes were drilled in the sides in order to make grooves that would support the camera holder when it is rotating about the z axis.  The first grooves that were made were not suitable because it didn’t provide enough clearance between the front portion of the camera holder and the base of the aluminum part.  We decided to remake the apart and this time we made the grooves higher in order to give the camera more clearance.

Six rods were inserted in the foam at an angle.  Later on these rods will be bent so we will be able to insert them in the wooden circular support.  When we had the design of the circular supports we were questioning whether or not we should have the rapid prototyping center created.  Because of the size of the part we concluded that it would be best to simply create the part using the drill press and ban saw.  The circular supports had cut out sections in order to minimize the weight of the payload.

When the circular supports were created we did some sanding in order to smooth the surface.  We were also considering the idea of painting the part simply to make it more appealing.

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