Shepard Test Stand Integration v1.1¶
This is a newer document based on this one , and you should refer to that original version if you want to see the revision history.
There were no formal integration tests for version 1.1, but the information for version 1.0's tests is below.
There were two live integration tests, and both were performed at Club Cyberia in Indianapolis, IN. The first was a rough first pass at giving everything the opportunity to work together, and the second was intended to collect usable data.
First Integration Session¶
The first integration test is talked about in this forum post .
This video shows the first integrated firing of the test stand.
The software at this point was very rudimentary, and did little more than tell us the test stand had the potential to give data similar to the published Estes thrust curves. It was at this point that it was realized that a contact pad needed to be created for the interface between the motor mount block and the Force Sensing Resistor (FSR). This ensured that there was contact across the entire face of the FSR without contacting the border area. This is a requirement of the FSR to make sure that you get valid readings. The FSR and the contact pad were affixed to the stand with double sided tape that was thin and did not compress under load.
Second Integration Session¶
The second integration session yielded little usable data due to a glitch in the data collection software. However, J. was able to get a good deal of screen capture video from the software which ended up in the following demo reel. There is some picture in picture footage starting at about 3:10 which shows the physical firing of the test stand synchronized with the screen cast of the data collection software.