I didn't get to do any welding today, I started out the day by asking the teacher for help on some homework. We have textbook questions we do, and then something we call "blueprints." The blueprints are a bunch of packets that have normally have upwards of 75 questions each. I am got stuck on unit (each packet is a unit) 5, I think there are 12 of them. On one of the drawings it said to find the missing lines. Well, the teacher could not find the lines either... so we got out the answer book. Even with the answer book we still took a few minutes to find them! After that he wanted me to o over and work on the solar car.
The solar car is a project that is being shared among different programs at boces, the welding shop is building the frame. The frame is made up of aluminum tubing. I have worked on it a few days out of the year, mostly making fishtails on the tubing in the machine shop next-door. The main parts of the frame are finished, and now it needs all of the other things that will actually make it a car. For the frame we were working off of a set of drawings, none of the other components have been designed yet. So we spent some time brainstorming. After somewhat of a plan was developed, we had to make a LOT of room!
The frame is about 10 feet long, the fiberglass underside, and top shell (solar panels) are each 17 feet long. We ended up moving the plasma-cam to the other side of the shop, and that gave us the room we needed. After moving that, we cleaned the area, and under the lockers. There are three giant gang-boxes, if that is what you want to call them. Anyway, they are each 8 feet tall, 6 feet wide and 3 feet long; those where also cleaned under. After cleaning, it was outside to retrieve the solar car's underbody.
The underbody was outside under a big stage looking thing, I don't really know what it is for. Anyway, the fiberglass body JUST fit under it, but would not fit out. The reason it would not fit out was because once it got out from under the stage, it was on top of snow. The snow lifted the underbody and caused it to hit the stage; we had to shovel the snow out of the way. Then it came out with no troubles. Getting it through the hallways was another challenge! I mentioned it was 17 feet long, but it is also almost 8 feet wide! Because it was fiberglass, we had to have 6 people carry it; not because of weight, but because if one person was on each end it would have broke in half under its own weight. With people on the sides of the underbody, we ended up being about 10-12 feet wide, going down the hallways. The halls are pretty wide so it was not a problem, the problem was when we had to go into the welding shop. The shop has a set of double doors that are right in a corner, so we had to stand the whole 17 foot underbody almost straight up, turn 90 degrees, and then go through the doors as we set it back down. We did eventually get it into the shop, but there was no place to put it.. so we set it on the desks. There is a morning class (that I am in) and an afternoon class; I have no idea what the afternoon class did with it.
Talking about homework before, reminded me of something else! Shnitzer does not really assign homework; he tells you what he wants done each quarter and it is your responsibility to go into the file cabinets, find what you need and do it yourself. Now, you can do more work then he asks you to each quarter, and you will end up being his favorite student... like me. 