Week 14

Spent time in the shop wiring up the plate, drilling holes in the plate and installing everything, testing every connection as it was assembled. – saturday

Friday was spent cutting the hole in the box by using a template hollow square and then routing the hole for the plate using that as a guide. Making sure that the hole was cut to the right size and the correct way was important. I could have easily jigsaw’d my way to victory but it wouldn’t have had the ability to mess up over and over. One small slip and I could have ruined the enclosure. The thursday was spent cutting and sizing the plate for the connectors on it. I started with my autocad drawing on a sheet of paper printed 1:1 scale. I cut a large box around it and then with the shear on the ironworker a hydraulic powered piece of machinery that can shear and punch holes in metal. I sheared the piece to the correct dimension, then punched holes using the center punch indentations I made earlier as guides. The whole process of cutting and punching the plate did not take a long time but tooling the machine to the correct hole size and making sure I was lined up and punching the correct spot was what took most of that time. Then I went back to the shop, cleaned up the sharp edges on the plate and painted it so it would not rust, corrode and would look slightly nicer.