I am describing an experiment for a scientific paper. In this experiment, I use a very well-known technique which I briefly describe, similar to the following variant (#1):
In this experiment, we measured the performance of our machine using the well-known method B.
B took the machine, turned it around three times, did some weird things with it, and then came up with a performance number.
Should the second sentence be in the past or present tense?
Since it should be a general description of how method B works and not what it actually did, it sounds strange to me that it is in past tense but a native speaker (but not a technical writer) told me to do so.
I would prefer this variant (#2):
In this experiment, we measured the performance of our machine using the well-known method B.
B takes the machine, turns it around three times, does some weird things with it, and then comes up with a performance number.
What variant makes more sense?