Machining Madness

January 18th, 2023.

It is said that life (or comedy) is all about timing.

Many of our drone's components are made of carbon fiber. We have 0.82" OD, 0.75" ID carbon fiber tubing for the drone's arms, 12"x12"x3/16" carbon fiber plating for the top part of the drone's body, as well as 0.25" OD carbon fiber rods for the drone's legs. Carbon fiber is an incredible material being light, strong, and pretty cool to look at. However, it is also inconvenient to machine. Due to the carbon dust created when machining the material, there is elevated risk of harm to electronics as well as human lungs. So, we contacted the engineering student machine shop here in the Engineering 5 building at the University of Waterloo to get some guidance as to how best to go about machining our components. They instructed us to use a vacuum equipped with a High-Efficiency Particulate Absorbing (HEPA) filter to collect the dust as the parts are being machined. And, luckily, they had just the one!

With that in mind, it was off to the engineering student machine shop we went.

No sooner did we arrive at the shop before learning that the HEPA filter vacuum had broken down that very morning. They did not know when they would be able to bring in a new one.

Perhaps capstone projects, too, are all about timing.