Shepard Test Stand

h1. Assembly v1.0

h3. Mechanical System

h3. Data Acquisition (DAQ) System

The assembly of the DAQ system consists of three main sub-assemblies:

# MAX31855 Thermocouple Amplifier Breakout Board

# Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) cable system

# Arduino ProtoShield

h4. MAX31855 Thermocouple Amplifier Breakout Board

* The only assembly required for the MAX31855 breakout board is to solder the header pins and terminal block onto the board. Once this is done the breakout board can be soldered to the Arduino Protoshield.

h4. Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) cable system

* The FSR came with male pins, which complicated assembly somewhat. It would be simpler to buy the version of the FSR with a female connector and make your cable fit that configuration. As it was, female D-SUB connectors that were on hand were used to connect the FSR to the CAT 5e cable that was used between the FSR and the ProtoShield. The pins were crimped on to two of the leads of the CAT 5e cable so that the female ends could recieve the male pins of the FSR. The reason crimping was used instead of soldering for the pins is that it's very easy to melt the FSR's substrate, thus making the FSR useless, or at least severely altering its operation.

h4. Arduino ProtoShield

* Components were soldered onto the ProtoShield in the configuration shown in the images below.

*Figure 1 - Top View of the ProtoShield*

!DAQ_Shield_Top_View.JPG!

*Figure 2 - Bottom View of the ProtoShield*

!DAQ_Shield_Bottom_View.JPG!