Today Erin, Kelsey and I finished soldering the rest of our circuitry and tried putting it all together with the batteries. We used small metal plates to connect the batteries in a series, but had trouble keeping the plates in the right position. Because our flashlight is made of delrin and most glues won't stick and we found ourselves having to use regular old scotch tape to keep the metal plates in place. This is not a satisfactory solution (for me, anyway) and I still want to experiment with other techniques.
If we held everything carefully in position with our hands, then we were able to get the LEDs to light. The problem was, we had trouble keeping the batteries flush against the metal. A few times we achieved this, but then if we tried to squish the rest of our circuity inside, everything shifted around a little and the LEDs would not light. Although everything in principle fit within our case, when we actually tried to close it, we had trouble positioning the batteries first. We tried closing it a few times and used scotch tape to keep everything in place, but it just wasn't working.
After messing with it a few times, some of the solder connecting the resistors to the switches broke off, so I worked for a great chunk of class today re-soldering much of the circuitry. The LEDs still worked after the soldering fixes, but when we tried to combine it with the batteries and put it in the case, it all just wasn't coming together.
We originally were using metal plates, but then we experimented with creating coils stretched to look like springs instead. I was able to make these using pliers and my hands, and they looked good, but did not fix our problem. The batteries would slide off the tips of the coils. Oscar suggested taking a plate of metal, and instead of having it lay flat against the bottom of our lantern case, like we originally had done, we bend the metal into a sort of staple, which could take some pressure from the batteries and offered much more surface area than a coil. Again, using this method, our LEDs lit, but we couldn't consistently get our lantern to work when we closed up the case.
We're going to start our final project next week, so unfortunately we didn't get our lantern in good working shape in time. We did have the most complicated circuits and three LEDs (the other groups used one). It's possible our ambition held us back, but either way, we learned an important lesson in engineering: not every project will go as planned, and problems will arise along the way, but as long as you work together, keep a clear vision of your project in mind, and consider all possible solutions, you will, in the end, learn much more about engineering than if you had an easy project. I'm actually kind of glad one of our projects didn't work, because then I know we really challenged ourselves. Either way, I can't wait to get working on our final project!
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