01/20-0/24

This week was dedicated to the Giant Word Clock. A lot of project was made to the clock. I was able to create an official list of what to do first and was able to cross out three of the points.

1. Cut diffusers for all blocks.

2. Cut acrylics of all blocks.

3. Cut out 1/8" wood pieces.

4. Use double-sided tape to tape LEDs down

5. Cut out 1/4" wood pieces.

6. Cut out white acrylics for blank blocks.

During this week I was able to put on a lot of the blocks onto the board which helped clear up the box and give it more room to fit my other pieces I haven't used yet. The 1/4" wood pieces take the longest to cut and we've already used two boards; this means that we have to use six more boards in order to reach our goal of 158 1/4" wood pieces. It's a lot of pieces and wood which is the reason why we saved it for last. I hope to finish putting in all of the letter blocks into the board so then we can test the code out and see if it is accurately displaying the time. With the code lighting up the LEDs, we hope that our power supply will be able to carry enough power to each LED. I've talked to Mr. L about how we can secure our nuts onto the screws because they get loose over time. This is a big problem because we don't want the letter blocks to be able to fall off. The physical part of this project is long and repetitive, it takes a lot of patience to be able to stand and wait for the wood to be cut, especially with the 1/4" wood. The 1/4" wood sometimes has issues cutting resulting in it being charred or not cutting at all, even if I've crossed with my troubles during laser-cutting, I am happy to see it come all together.

Black acrylic letters, white acrylic letters, and blank blocks.

Black acrylic letters ready to go on the board.

My friend, Jaspreet, is the one working on the code and I want to provide help to her after I finish the board or just the letter blocks as the blank blocks do not need an LED. The code she has is similar to a previous project someone has done in the shop but she has written the code out to test if it will change. This is her current code:

WIP Code

Overall, I can confidently say that the word clock can be finished within this month or the first week of February unless we run into a big bump.

This is how the wires look like after the LED was taped down, more uniformed.

Only 19 LED's to cover!