Week 4

This week was full of surprises!  We started (and finished.. sort of) the assembly of our first device.  It all started in lab with braiding thread.  As shown below in figure 4.1, Becky and Ariana are hard at work braiding three strands of thread together to minimize the resistance.

 Figure 4.1 - Ariana and Becky braiding to make a total of 15 braided triplets

We decided to glue the LEDs to the strands the next day when we had enough time to get through all of them, or so we thought...  As it turns out, the loom we have has spaces too close together.  While it works great for one row of LEDs, the pressure of multiple rows forces the entire design to buckle.  The beginnings of the matrix is shown in figure 4.2 below.

Figure 4.2 - The first few rows of LEDs

Conditions got worse by the row.  Shown in figure 4.3 below is our close to finished first design. 

Figure 4.3 - Almost finished first attempt

While our first method for building the matrix may not have worked out (we're not entirely sure yet - it's still drying) this week was definitely a learning experience!  We have already begun to design new production methods and hopefully we will be able to start finalizing and implementing one of them next week. 

-The team