Thank you for sharing this, Francois. It was a very interesting read! I studied space hardware technology as a secondary subject at the university so this story brought a smile to my face. I recall thinking at the time that space hw engineering must be a glamorous field. Having read your story... well, it seems I already had all the necessary glamorous tools at home :)
Have a great weekend! /Petri On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 8:13 AM, Francois Lanciault < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi group, here is a short story for you this morning: > > My trusty QL is controlling a test setup built to qualify a new component > for space use as we speak. > > To make the story short, I work for a company that build satellite and > other space hardware. Two weeks ago, one of our design failed during an > official life test in the lab. We made some changes to the design and we > are about to restart the test soon. > > But I found out that changing the material of the failed part for a > different type might be an even better solution. After talking to my boss, > he said that we have no time to qualify that new material before the > official test. His other objection was that a new test setup was needed to > mechanically bend the part made of the new material for many thousand > cycles before he would even consider it. There was no time, and no money. > You need to understand that a setup like that usually cost a few $10000 and > take about a month to built, program the test computer etc. > > The day after I told my boss: I WILL test this solution. Give me 24 hours > to built the test setup, and it will cost you nothing. I agreed with a > smile. 24 hours later, the test was running. > > I use scrap flight parts, a couple of brackets and a lot of Meccano parts. > For the actuator, I use a small $20 servo-motor that I had for a robotic > project of mine. I also had the controller for the servo. This controller > can be attached to a simple serial port. That is where the QL comes into > play. I needed a computer to control the amount of bending, the timing, the > large quantity of cycles and able to log everything. I also needed a > computer that was easy to program, as I started to work on the program at > 23h00. Because the QL is the computer I know best, the program was finished > 2 hours later. > > The next day, when I installed everything in the thermal chamber, I must > admit that it looks a bit foolish. But it did work. I closed the door and > set the temperature to -50degC. Everybody knew it would not last through > the night. But this morning I opened the chamber and it was still running > great, 25000 cycles later. When I left work it was at 40000 cycles. > > Anyway, It is fun to see my QL in a lab running this test, and I thought > you might like it. The other thing that I like is that I can work on my 3D > game at lunch time :-) > > Have a nice day! > François > _______________________________________________ > QL-Users Mailing List > http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm > _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
