Welcome

The goal of this blog is to motivate myself and others for further practice as well as provide details that might explain what's going on..


Monday, September 11, 2006

First construct

Note: Can't remember the date - just picked a random date as close to the actual event as possible.

Having joined the Robotex team of the University of Tartu (still being in the 11th grade of a grammar school), I had a lot of wires to solder together with heat shrinking isolation tubes applied. Since there were no heaters around, I used the soldering iron to heat the isolation tubes. I didn't like it, because there was always the possibility of me ruining the tip of the soldering iron by accidentally moving it too close to the isolation tube. So, I avoided using the tip of it for heating, but it was still a nasty job, as the soldering iron started to smell awfully, when I accidentally hit the tube with it (the plastic / rubber / whatever it is, melted onto the surface of the soldering iron).

Then, a couple of days later I suddenly noticed that when I visualize the feeling of the soldering iron repelling off the tube, I'm able to keep it at a constant distance from the tube. It soon felt as if the iron were pushed away from the shrinking tubes so strongly that no matter how carelessly I stuffed the soldering iron into a bunch of wires, nothing melted.