After Action Report - Fort Wayne Maker Faire
I just got back from the Fort Wayne Regional Maker Faire where we demo'ed the Shepard Test stand once an hour for the public (we fired 2 motors at each demo: a B and a D). The good news is we got decent sized crowds and we were able to determine that the data collection issue has been resolved (see attached zip file for all the raw data collected at the Maker Faire).
The less good news is we also experienced a catastrophic motor failure (crazy, given how hard we tried to test this event without any luck). As you can see from the video below, no one was hurt. However, the motor mount was damaged beyond use (as designed) and we had to cancel our remaining demos. The pictures below show the damage up close.
Video of test failure - credit Greg @ Club Cyberia
Views of motor mount damage - Full set of photos on Flickr
While undesirable, this event does clearly demonstrate that the safety procedures and design considerations worked correctly. Good work team! And while we were already getting close to implementing a round of upgrades, clearly we will have to get to those before we can do any more demos.