PROJECT 1

ELECTRONICS & SOLDERING

PART 1: ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS

IMAGE 1

IMAGE 2

RESISTOR: Resistors are passive electronic component's that reduces the electrical current by limiting the flow of electrons. There are multiple purposes for resistors such as, current limiting, voltage division and heat generation.
DIODE: The electrical component that allows current to pass through it in one singular direction is a diode. They are important in many other appliances where current must flow in one direction.
POTENTIOMETER: Another passive electronic component, potentiometers are three terminal resistors. Potentiometer's are used to adjust the control on electrical devices such as, volume controls and audio equipment.
CAPICITOR: These components have the capacity to store energy, electrical charge, that creates static voltage (similar to a rechargeable battery). Many different forms of capacitors exist but they all essentially do the same thing which is store a charge.
TRANSFORMER: Transformers are responsible for transferring power at a certain current and voltage to another circuit that operates at a different current and voltage level. Transformers have different characteristics for different applications like audio transformers are designed to be used to transmit audio signals in audio circuits.

ELECTRONIC GUIDE AUD177

PART 2: SOLDERING

Using the wire strippers, I cut only halfway into the outer jacket of the cable being mindful not to cut into the insulation (I cut into the insulation twice before doing it correct). I moved the strippers around the outer jacket so that the cable separates in two where I made the incision. This was done for both ends of the cable
With a bit of twist-pull force, I pulled the end of the jacket that had been separated from the other end so that the wires were exposed either end.
Next I removed the silver piece of material off the exposed wires and then separated and twisted the loose wires (the shield) together. This left me with one hot wire (red), one cold wire (white), and my earth wire (the loose wires twisted into one).
Using the wire strippers I chopped off a small, but decent, amount of the hot and cold wires. Prior to getting the wires ready to be tinned I pushed each end of the cable into their shells to avoid any annoyance in the future. With both ends prepped and ready to be tinned, I clamped each end to hold the cable in place.
I used the soldering iron to apply heat to the solder which melted onto each of the wires while making sure the solder didn't clump up and went on smoothly.
After I had to make sure that the male and female connector were going to have the hot, cold and earth wires soldered into the correct pins. Using the soldering iron, I again applied heat to the pins and using solder I filled each pin (I also burned the plastic of the connector).
Very delicately, without burning the plastic of the connector, I soldered the earth, hot and cold wires to their respective pins making sure they were going to the right pins. This was the most tedious and lengthy process as to solder the wires into each of the pins was very pedantic.
Once all the wires on both ends of the cable are connected to their respective male and female connector, I assemble the shell to cover the connector. Using Ryan's device, I plugged either end into the input's to read if both ends received signal. They both received a clear signal.

REFLECTION

Considering this is a trimester 2 unit this project was a lot more straight forward than I had originally thought. Electronics and soldering can seem daunting and bland from a vantage point, and in some cases it is, but for the most part it is pretty accessible. The electronic components guide and section of Project 1, was the least eventful/easiest section to complete and was completed by week 2; two weeks prior to the submission date for the project.

The soldering section of the project was the part that I felt was a little more challenging, but not in a negative light. More in a 'took me a while to get accustomed to the process' light. I found this section the most enjoyable as it was completely different to anything I've done at my time here at SAE and reminded me of my metalwork classes in high school, which was well over 8 years ago. There were moments like the soldering of the hot, cold and earth wires to the connector, that I found challenging and at times frustrating but, the process as a whole was very interesting. Ryan helped me heaps as well, which was great as I arrived an hour late to the soldering class.

Although this project was a little on the easier side, I am sure that the following projects aren't going to be as much of breeze to get through. At this moment of writing this reflection it's looking like this project is going to be an early submission so I can't think of anything I would do different except trying to attend more of the classes (I was absent for one of them due to falling ill). Not many of the transferrable skills were used during this project except for maybe having a strong work ethic, problem solving and a positive attitude.

This of course won't be the case for the rest of the unit and there are definitely some additional tasks that I can do to improve the knowledge we covered during the project. Going over the electronics guide along with a couple of soldering tutorials would probably be the best option for me to do between now and next week's class. We've covered the least exciting part of this unit, and I am assuming the rest of the unit will be more of a focus on live sound which I am eagerly looking forward to.

Page updated

Report abuse