… after the Palestine campaign with BLASTpol, Spider integration begins in Toronto.
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After three days of work we are done with Bemco testing. We drove the ACS and computer boxes up to 55 °C and down to -30 °C with all the systems working. Back in the other High Bay, the reaction wheel, the elevation drive and the inner frame were mounted and the cryostat was opened. […] The Spider gondola is composed of 35 CFRP tubes. Gluing of all the tubes required 5 days. All I can say -and I think Natalie shares my opinion- it is a tricky and long process. Here are some more pictures of the gluing, particularly of the trickier inserts, such as the spreader bar and the […] We stared the gluing process with the less demanding joints: the scoop and the tubes that will be under compression. As we got better we moved into the more demanding tubes. We used a jig to fix the clocking of the inserts, we cured the tubes vertically in the jig for 24 hours and then […] We prepared a new non-grooved test tube as the fishing lines spacer approach behaved poorly in the pull test. And the results were excellent: the tubes where pulled up to 45700 lbf before the glue joint failed. Here are some pictures of the gluing procedure. |
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