With FDR (Final Design Review) coming up soon, Gator Waves spent this week continuing to make progress towards completing the project. The PCB layouts for the current drivers and instrumentation amplifiers were finalized and ordered. Unfortunately, the expected delivery date is listed as April 19th, which is the day of FDR, but fingers are crossed for an early delivery. Nevertheless, back up plans have been devised in case they do not arrive in time for the event.

The electrical engineers have also moved forward with characterizing the timing of their current controller. Because the final assembly is still being finalized by the mechanical engineers, the timing is being measured using a single striker rod and incident bar. The controller is tuned by monitoring the output of the position sensor (magnetic encoder), verifying the SPI communication to the DAC, and comparing what is observed to MATLAB and ModelSim simulations. Also, one of the magnetic encoders was broken this week, so moving forward the design will feature two striker rods rather than three.

The mechanical engineers spent the week finishing the manufacturing of z-brackets for holding the specialized incident bar, as well as adjusting the alignment of the striker rods with the aluminum spacers. Also, the team worked on the first draft of the poster for FDR.