Additional weight for our CanSat

The guidelines require the CanSat to weigh between 300 and 350 grams. Because our CanSat only weighs 220 grams we needed to add at least additional 80 grams of extra weight to reach the minium weight.

We choose to use lead as extra weight again because of its high density and softness, but this time, instead of strapping strips of lead to the batteries with cable ties we choose to melt the lead in the same form our circuit boards are.

By doing so we are able to simply bolt the lead plate onto our CanSat like our circuit boards. The plate will be fixed to the bottom part of our CanSat in order to help stabilize the fall so our CanSat can take some steadier pictures.

mold drying

the materials we used

To create this plate, we first needed to make a mold in which we would later pour the hot lead into. We made the mold out of plaster and used the round boards out of the CanSat Starter Kit as a template.

lead plate cooling inside the mold

the mold and the template we used

After the lead cooled down, we drilled four holes into the plate through which the threaded rods of our CanSat will go in order to fix the plate with the help of some nuts and washers in place.

plate no. 1

plate no. 2

In the end, each plate (we made two of them for our two CanSats) weighs around 90 grams, which would make our CanSat weigh about 310 grams.

This is not the final weight of our CanSat though because we still need to add a shell but the shell shouldn't weigh too much (we estimate around 5 grams).