Spartan Speedway Individual Blog

Prior to this week, on Monday, I went to have a quick conversation with Professor Muntz in order to ask if the machine shop had a die to thread a 1/2-13 aluminum rod. In addition, I also asked about gaining access to the machine shop during off hours but it seems we may only potentially have access during the Wednesday class which we apparently have to sign-up for. Most of this meeting was spent putting the old track back together. I came to realize that taking it apart was not nearly as difficult as putting it back together. The main issue has been the inconsistency of manufacturing and not every set of pieces working as they should. I do hope that the near rail bender we hope to build will resolve most of the issues revolving around the curved sections. In addition, I believe that we should be able to be a little less sloppy with the metal work, whether that be with the bending, hole drilling, countersinking or whatever else. 

This week we re assembled one of each section of the original track including a switch, a curve and a straight section. We also finalized the design for the new rail bender. I believe that the design should work and will be more stable than the original. In preparation for next week, I was tasked to see if any of the campus machine shops would have the capability to thread a rod. I will probably be visiting an ME41 class sometime soon and if that proves to be unsuccessful, will look into the E123 machine shop. Otherwise, if neither have the capabilities, will would probably look elsewhere or just end up purchasing what we need. 

This week we had a guest speaker who discussed how to get personal rapid transportation into world view and what we would need to do with the small-scale track to get there. His suggestions resulted in a lot of discussion of what we would do with small-scale from here on out. For the small-scale itself, we are going with a simpler addition to the track in order to set future teams in a better direction. Personally, the only thing I am concerned about is that we may not be contributing enough as a whole. I feel that with the location change and the small addition to the track, not much will be accomplished in our year. I hope that we will be able to get the track built fairly quickly such that we will have extra time to manufacture extra railing and to produce a full CAD model of what is envisioned for the small-scale track in the future but unfortunately only time will tell.

This was the first week after completing the entire move from the previous warehouse to our current one. The move was a bit of a setback for us just like everyone else but we will see what we can do. After the class meeting and breaking up into our individual groups, we worked on trying to regather all of our rails, supports and whatever else we would need for our project. The first goal is to rebuild the track as it was to get that baseline setup and we will then work towards assembling the new and improved rail bender, which we hope to use to create the middle section that we designed and hope to implement this semester. We also ordered a cord like drill attachment which we hope will help with assembling and disassembling the track instead of using a bent screwdriver and doing everything by hand.