User:SeanShriner/ENES-100/Project 1

Week1 Narrative
I worked on different concepts that could be employed in the project. This includes different ideas for the object to be moved, such as a metallic sphere, and tiny car, or an object that would use rails as a means to move around. Since these objects were so different I then laid out ideas for tracks that could be utilized by each object. After laying out the different ideas for the object and track, I described how the coil could be made and how the coil would work. With these ideas set in place I came up with a way to have the different objects along with their respective tracks could be used so that the activation of the coil would be controlled by the object itself. The CDIO page can be found here. The /Conceive/ page can be found here.

Week2 Narrative
I continued to work on the different concepts that could be applied to the project. I finished up work on the object activated coil idea by laying out how this would work on a track which utilized the the rail object concept. After laying out the different possibilities. It was a concensus that the best object to be used was the metallic sphere and thus the best track to be used was a tube, most likely plastic. I then moved onto different ways of breaking the object. This included mechanical means as well as using the coil itself to slow the object down. The mechanical ways of breaking included a small metal plate protruding from the top of the track. when the ball hit the plate, the plate would raise but at the same time press against the ball slowing it down. After the ball passed, the plate would revert to its starting position using either a spring or how the plate itself interacted with the top of the track. Using the coil to slow the object would be the same as using it to accelerate the object except on the opposite side that was used for acceleration. I designed two basic circuits showing how the coil could be used to speed up as well as slow down the object. The second circuit implemented a safety switch that would be used to turn the coil on continuously so that the next time the object encountered the coil the object would stop in the center of the coil. After that I laid out how different sensors could be used/implemented to activate to speed up, activate to slow down, or to measure how fast the object is going to determine if the object should be sped up or slowed down at the next coil.

Week3 Narrative
This week I started testing different coils with different objects. I used 5 different coils and three different objects. Since wires are packaged on a spool, they come "pre-packaged" as coils. The 5 different coils are as follows: first was made of 15 feet of 18 gauge solid hook up wire, the second was made of 90 feet of 22 gauge stranded hookup wire, the third was 40 feet of 22 gauge solid magnetic wire, the fourth was 75 feet of 26 gauge solid magnetic wire, and the fifth was 200 feet of 30 gauge solid magnetic wire. The 3 objects tested were a 3/8 inch steel ball bearing, a 5/16 inch steel ball bearing, and a (approx.) 2 and 3/8 inch screw. the power source used for all the tests was a 6 volt lantern battery.

Week4 Narrative
This week I tested the 22 gauge magnetic wire coil and the 18 gauge hookup wire coil with four 6 volt batteries connected in series to test the correlation between volts, amps, wire gauge, and number of turns. It appears that voltage is more important when using high gauges and and more turns, and amps are more important with low gauges and less turns.--SeanShriner (discuss • contribs) 21:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)