Wednesday - Stuff!

I went to a presentation by GE today for their facility in Salem.  They do all sorts of power related things there including building controllers for wind turbines, solar panels, and traditional power plants.

They had a whole table full of components that go into the power controllers.  The big blue cylinder is a 9000 micro-farad capacitor that can be charged to 400 V!

This is a radiator used to cool diodes in their generator contol systems.  It is made of copper and weighs 50 pounds.  They sandwith the diodes between two of them with 20,000 pounds of force.  There are eight diodes in each controller, so that's 800 pounds of copper just to cool the diodes!

Tuesday-Nothing to see here...move along...

Sorry...

Nothing really happened today.  Seriously, compared to yesterday, today was boring.


I should have saved that hat picture for today...curse my lack of forward planning.

MONDAY - IN CAPS BECAUSE I'M SHOUTING

This weekend was Parent's Weekend and my mom came to visit.  We did all sorts of stuff.  On Saturday night we watched fireworks:

On Sunday morning we went to Roanoke and drove around to see some stuff.  One of the places was the Roanoke Star.

 It started snowing this morning so I decided to wear a hat.  I couldn't decide which one to wear...and things kind of...got a bit silly...

Tuesday - More pictures

Monday - April 16th

Friday - Friday The Thirteenth Edition

It seems there have been even more problems with the 3D-printers.  As you can see only one of them is actually functional, and one of them had to be removed to be repaired. 

I had my ISE lab today.  This time we machined the pulleys we cast last time.  We used a lathe to machine them down to the proper dimensions and cut a groove.

We then drilled and tapped a hole in the side of the boss for a set screw to go into.

Here's a picture of the finished product!

Thursday - New Brakes

I recieved some new brake pads for my bike (thanks Mom!) last weekend, and I finally got around to putting them on my bike.  Now I can actually make my bike stop! As a reference here's what the old pads looked like:

As you can see, they are quite worn out...

...but they're so shiny!

T-T-T-Tuesday!

I usually have a story and a picture or two

Waiting here on this blog for you.

Now this piece of writ

Will be all you get

But tomorrow I’ll have something new.

(No I’m not injured or dead,

And I didn’t spend all day in bed.

Nothing happened today,

That is worth time to say,

So I wrote out these limericks instead!)

Monday - Weekend Wrap Up

I had an awesome weekend.  My mom and brother came up to visit me for Easter and we did a bunch of fun stuff.  We dyed eggs, made cupcakes, gave out presents and flew kites.  I attached a camera to my kite and took some photos over the Drillfield.  A few of the best pictures are included below.

Thursday - Special 'What's a Wednesday?' Edition!

Doing some more fiberglassing at the Human Powered Submarine meeting.

This is some of the fiberglassing I did myself.  Its inside the submarine, all the way at the back.

Someone set off the fire alarm with a hair dryer at 11:30 so what did I do?

I got a midnight milkshake at Deet's of course!

TThis is a picture I took outside of the Ware Lab after the sub meeting.

Tuesday | yadsueT

I acctually found a use for the hole in my desk!  Ice cream cone holder!

That's all I have for today...

Monday - Monday

This Saturday was the Big Event, Virginia Tech's major community service project.  Thousands of volunteers complete hundreds of projects.  I was part of a Galileo Team and our project was clearing brush, raking, and mulching at an older lady's house.

The entrance to the tool pickup area.  That gateway held together with string doesn't look at all rickety...

A bunch of people gathered on the Drill Field waiting for the event to start.

I took this today.  I was walking out of the library after a team meeting for my Industrial Systems Lab and I thought it looked cool.