Tenaris HS Interns make a flashing LED Sign

Tenairs Hickman's high school interns, Darius Brown, Dustin Fields, & Earmen Myrick earned 42 hours of training in Basic Electronics from Steve Crosskno, Electrical Engineer at Arkansas Northeastern College, The Solutions Group. These students are in their senior year at Blytheville high school and work at Tenaris to gain real world intern experience. Tenaris has graciously allowed them to attend class for three weeks to work on a project based electronics course.

This group project is designed for students to:

· Gain basic knowledge and understanding of basic electronic components

· Work together as a team for a common project goal

· Plan and layout the project details

· Gain soldering and detailed wiring skills

· Understand how to assemble several discrete components into a functioning electronic project

The project chosen is an LED display of the company name in individual letters made from arranging individual colored LEDs to form the letter shapes. The college logo will also be constructed from LEDs which consists of a book with a flame at the top.

The letters will first sequence from off to on in a random fashion, then the entire word will flash on. They will also construct a circuit to make the flame LEDs “flicker”.

The sequencer is constructed using a 555 timer IC chip that creates a “free-running” square wave generator which is fed into a 4017 decade counter IC chip that turns on a random letter with each clock pulse. The outputs of the decade counter will drive a power field effect transistor (FET) that in turn drives the LED arrays.

What skills are they learning by doing project based training?

Upon completion, the student should have a thorough understanding of fundamental electronic theory as well as a working knowledge of electronic devices. These concepts are applied to the design and operation of circuits containing a variety of electronic devices in different configurations. Analysis and design of electronic circuits will be done throughout the course.