02: Basic tools, procedures, and electronics

Lab 2 June 27, 2019 and Lab 3 June 28, 2019

In today’s lab we pulled out our circuits from the previous lab and explored measuring voltage. We also took a look at the different kinds of microcontrollers and what they are made up of. Also discussed during today’s lab is Ohm’s law, which is the equation that allows one to calculate voltage, current, or resistance.

This is what the voltmeter we used looked like

By pulling the wire just a little bit out of my breadboard and exposing it, I was able to gently press the voltmeter against the exposed wire and saw the fluctuating voltage. My volatge went from zero to about 4.6 because my motor was still running my blink program from the fisrt lab as seen in the video below.

After that we ran a program that used analog input pin 0 and then printed the results in the Serial Monitor.

This is what the program looked like:

And these were the results from the program shown in the Serial Monitor:

###Lab 3:

During the second lab for this “week” we were introduced to some of the more basic tools in the lab. This inclded different types of saws, the drill press, and other hand tools.

The first new skill we learned during this lab was sawing. We learned about three different types of saws.

The push saw is a saw that actually cuts the material on a push stroke and requires more power during those strokes. It is more hefty and usually bigger than the other saws and looks like this:

The second saw we encountered was the pull saw. The pull saw required more effort on the pull stroke and was usually a lot lighter, well crafted, and sleeker. The pull saw looked like this:

The third and final saw we encountered was the hacksaw. The hacksaw was almost like a combination of the pull and push saws, because it required equal effort on each stroke. The hacksaw looked like this:

During the lab we sawed through a number of material including wood, metal, and acrylic. We also used each of the saws we were introduced to. Before sawing one had to use a clamp to hold the material in place while it was being sawed. Here’s what the clamp looked like:

Here is a video of a piece of wood being sawed using a push saw:

And here is what my first two (not very straight) sawed pieces of wood looked like:

After sawing and learning a bit about hand drilling we were introduced to one of the most intimidating tools in the lab. The drill press is a very useful tools, but there are a lot of steps and safety precautions one must take to ensure they are using it correctly. This is what the drill press looks like: