Float V2 is made out of of two pontoons connected together using PVC bracing. One side contains the spool and the spooling motors (the spool happened to fit inside the pontoons perfectly) while the other contains our batteries, wireless communication device, and other electronics. An image of the spool in the pontoon is below:
We first made the bracing to hold the two floats together. We did this using some inch-and-a-half PVC pipe that we had lying around from the previous version.
To attached the large spooling motor we then found that, using the same Plexiglas mounting plate we had used last time, we could easily line up the pulley on the motor to the pulley on the spool. We held the motor to the top using a u-bolt which also allows us to tighten/loosen the driving belt (refer to the image above).
To attach the motor used to organize the tether, we drilled four holes in the top of the pontoon and attached the motor using 4 bolts and the motor's mounting face. We then needed to create another gear at the opposite end of this motor to attach the belts used to organize the tether (for more specifics on this idea check out our previous blog post). We realized that this motor's shaft lined up perfectly with the u-bolt used to attached the motor on the other side of the pontoon. We then created a piece of Plexiglas which could be put on the u-bolt and would have a ball-bearing that holds the second pulley in our system. An image of this motor is below:
By nature u-bolts can be raised and lowered. This allows for tensioning of the spool's driving belt. By adding slots on the pontoon for the u-bolt we were also able to easily tension the organizational belt.
Below is the finished V2: Part 1 of out float (and Nick)!
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