This week has been a more progressive than the past few weeks have been. Last Friday I got my cubes off the printer and spray painted them white to help contrast the black color of the disc. This week I got to see my cubes all dried and ready so I attached them to the disc and mounted it onto motor.
The spray painting process didn't take too long and a majority of it was able to be completed in a single day. I had to wait until the week after to apply the clear coat however. Once the clear coat was on there I took the cubes out of the spray painting booth and I had to insert the threaded inserts. Putting the threaded inserts into the cubes was a lengthy process but not a complicated one. I had to take these small brass rings with threads on the insides and put them in the holes on the bottoms of the cubes. To do this I had to use a soldering iron to heat up and melt the plastic around the threaded insert as I put it in. They all went in without any trouble and they were ready to be screwed onto the disc.
After attaching the cubes onto the disc I mounted the disc onto the motor and started to prep the zoetrope to be tested. Unfortunately I forgot how my zoetrope actually functions. I had to relearn what all the wires in my circuit did and how my zoetrope was supposed to be wired. I plugged in my zoetrope expecting it to work but then it didn't run so I got scared because it looked like all the connections were there. After some troubleshooting with a multimeter I learned that the alligator clips were the issue because they weren't conducting. So I got new clips and my zoetrope was back up and running and the results were fantastic. It was finally producing an animation which ran smoothly and completely without any trails. Only drawback is that it only works in the dark but hopefully next week I will begin trying to solve that issue. Mr. Christy found these superpowered LEDs which were 70 watts each. Using 4 of these LEDs would bring the total wattage of the circuit to 280 watts which is more than enough to make illusion work in broad daylight. For reference the total wattage of the circuit right now is only 24 watts.
(Video filmed and uploaded by Mr. Noah Lewkowitz)
The rest of this week has just been modeling. I've modeled up the motor housing which will hold the motor and the PCB of the zoetrope. I've also come up with a fairly good idea of my vision and how I will create that. Hopefully my idea will be able to be done because it looks really cool in my head. Won't be able to tell until next week however.
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