June work

Well, bad news...I've decided to suspend work on the ELB indefinitely.
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Just kidding.

I've actually just restarted work on it. I spent about 9 hours figuring out how I'm going to do all the wiring. The following picture shows about half of the result.

You can see the 4 blue lipos in the middle of the deck. Instead of linking the batteries together and running only a few plugs out of the box, I decided to go the "run-every-single-plug-out-of-the-box" route. While this meant more plugs, more drilling, and more soldering, I really wanted the ability to separate all of the packs (safety, maintenance, etc). Having each pack's terminal and taps also has a charging advantage: Since my modified HobbyKing 4 port charger (see previous post) can charge 4 packs at a time at 200W each (I think...) , I can charge faster than if I was charging the packs in parallel.
Anyways. It'll be apparent what the mess of wires is doing when it's done. The black thing on the right is a MAXI blade fuse holder. The black in the box is an Albright SU-60 contactor.

Left to do:
1. Design/make/instal mounts for motor controllers (6 hours)
2. Finish wiring (5 hours)
3. Install fans (5 hours)
4. Install dead man's switch (3 hours)
5. Blue-RTV holes (2 hours)
6. Mount trucks with risers (2 hours)
7. Design/Make Wii-nunchuck controller (15 hours?)
8. Mount ESC's and motors. Test and program motor controllers (8 hours)
8.5. Fix electronics problems (I'm 99% sure something will go wrong...it always does)
9.  Test ride around a little inside (10 min)
10. Cut/Glue polyurethane tires on (24 hours)
11. Test drive
12. Finish waterproofing (2 hours)

Estimated time left on project: ~72 hours
I'd say ELB is about 80-85% complete at this point.

So, in accordance with the laws of project-dom, I've started designing my next projects before finishing this one. 3 more electric hubmotor powered longboards: a "light" version, a "heavy" version, and a secret version. "oooo, I wonder what it is..." :-P . I should have some preliminary CAD drawings by the end of the summer for "heavy". So, by extrapolating my current project work schedule, I should be done with the next three longboards by...oh...say...2020? 2025? haha.



In other news:
MIT Rocket Team update: We got 2nd place at USLI!
DBF: Top 10!
I won the Unified Engineering Flight Competition! Our plane carried a record breaking 941g of payload.

I'm really happy with the way the semester turned out...even though I was stressed beyond belief (and couldn't find time to work on ELB :(  ) . I'm interning at Aurora Flight Sciences this summer designing/building UAV's...it's really awesome. I'll be doing ELB work some nights and on the weekends, so look for weekly updates.