Drilling and Cutting and Soldering...Oh My!

There are 3 groups in the Robotics Club, with 4 kids in each group. All groups have finished building their ROVs with the PVC pipes. The had to measure and mark the pipes, drill holes, and cut the pipes.

They are all working on the motors now. They had to cover the motors with electrical tape, which surprisingly took a long time because of how precise they had to be.
Next, they opened up the tether cord, which looks like an Ethernet cable, and connected each wire to a motor. Each colored wire has 2 smaller wires twisted together- a solid and a striped wire. One has to go to the positive terminal and the other has to go to the negative terminal on the motor. The first group to cover their motors with electrical tape didn't carefully read the directions that said to mark the positive terminal before you tape them up, so they had to take the tape off and start over. There are a lot of directions to follow and the students are beginning to realize how important it is to read over everything before diving in.

After they have all the motors connected to the wires they need to solder the wires. This is the step we stopped at on Friday and will continue with this week. We watched a soldering tutorial video and began trying it out. There is only 1 soldering iron in the tool box so they will have to share and take turns! Good thing I'm a kindergarten teacher too, right?

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