Spartan Speedway Individual Blog

This week we began using our track bender to bend the actual curves for the track. It was a slow and steady process but the rails seem to come out better than they did last year. We are slowly putting the track together and plan to have the four switch sections completed by the presentations on Friday. Looking ahead at next week, we will prioritize the adjustments on the track to allow for optimal traversing of the bogie. Some curves may be a little bit too long and may need to be cut. Other things include leveling the track a little better, filing down some of the uneven rails and such. If time permits, we will attempt to implement the entry and exit rails but if not, we will at least have it cut for next year to implement if they so please. 

This week we began testing our newly completed rail bender a little. It took some fine-tuning and adjusting to get it to perform to how we would like but we were able to get it to perform how we liked. Other than that, there isn't anything specific to report. Looking into the next week, we will try to get our entry and exit rails laser cut and begin bending the actual curves to be added to the track.

Over this past week, we have been welding the last few pieces of unistrut that would support the wheels that the rails would roll along. We spent a good amount of time grinding down the welds and trying to make things look as presentable as possible and to smooth the surface out so the rotating shaft can slide along the supports. Upon completion of the welds and the grinding, we completed the assembly of the rail bender. Everything was working as planned until we tested it on one of our rails. Although the rail turned out as we had liked, the processing of bending it wasn't as we had hoped. The wheels would tilt upwards so the rail would begin to have a small spiral and the sliding base would begin to life, causing the threaded rods to bend. We determined that this was all due to the bottle jack not applying its force on the sliding base equidistant from the to threaded rods resulting in a moment. We will spend this week trying to figure out the best approach for a solution to this...

During this week's meeting, we finished the rest of the presentations. It's good to hear that all the project groups are finalizing their designs and entering the manufacturing and assembly phases as the parts and other orders come in. It is unfortunate to hear about Makers Faire being cancelled but it is somewhat a relief due to all the unexpected occurrences we've dealt with this semester stemming from the location change, to the water cutter breaking and whatever else. Nevertheless, we look forward to having out own local demonstration to demonstrate the work that we've put in for the past year or so. On a individual team side of things, we should be finished welding everything in this up coming week. It was unfortunate that our previous setup didn't quite work as expected but we believe that this new setup will be more reliable. We should be done assembling the rail bender during next week's meeting and will begin testing it to see how it bends. Other t...

This week was presentation 2. However, only a few groups had gone before we had to stop and people had to assist full-scale guideway moving some of their old sections into the building. It seems like for the teams that did present, they are doing well but the situation with the water cutter and the central machine shop is rather unfortunate and will probably be a slight set back but hopefully won't be particularly detrimental. On a individual team aspect, not too much occurred besides preparing for the presentation. We did prepare some of our parts for the rail bender to be welded relatively soon. Once the welding has been completed on these pieces, everything should be ready to be assembled and we are looking forward to testing our new and improved rail bender design next week. 

For this week, there was nothing particularly major to report on. No major changes were made to any of our designs or anything like that. We are steadily putting our rail bender together and hope to be completed by next week. In addition, over spring break and into the first week of April, we will begin to look into aluminum vendors and decide who to purchase from and whether we should commit to switching to 3003 aluminum or continue with the 6000 series. We will also begin preparing for presentation for the week of our return.

This week we continued working on building our rail bender. Unfortunately we weren't able to meet yesterday which will slightly delay our completion but it should be alright. We reattached the wheels today and I hope that they are well placed and the rail will be perpendicular from the applied force as is ideal. We also fastened the fixed base but on slight concern is that the back end is a small distance off-centered which will hopefully not affect the results. Lastly, we applied the L brackets to the support pieces in the back of our design but one concern with those is if the unistrut will create a uniform flat surface to slide against as most of the cuts were slightly angled due to manual cutting.We also received samples of our printed parts next week. I am not totally sure what we should do about the cleaning of the third rail bracket piece but we will figure it out eventually.

This week, we continued with the presentations and were finally able to give ours. I feel that it went pretty well and we were able to appropriately answer the questions and concerns that were expressed. We also spent this past Tuesday working on our rail bender. I feel that it is really starting to come along but it is rather tedious while trying to make exact measurements by hand to allow for as much accuracy in our bends as possible.I personally have high hopes for the rail bender and am excited to work on it next week.

This week was presentation week. Unfortunately we weren't able to present this week but we will next week. It is always nice to hear about the other group's projects and to see how everything is coming along. I personally feel like we ourselves are following a decent direction and our project is slowly coming along. We should have the rail bender built fairly soon and I hope it meets our expectations. From there, it will just be a matter of bending rails, assembling and if time permits, being more creative with out track. Ideally the team will have access to E123 by next week to take care of some in-house manufacturing but again, it will be a matter of availability.   

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.   

This week we were able to give our presentation. I personally think that the presentation went pretty good. I believe we were able to discuss everything we originally intended to, including the FEA analysis, new track bender design and other various things. In response to our inability to use injection molding or casting for our hanger brackets, Dr. Furman suggested the use of cut outs and standoffs, in order to make the brackets without having to print them. The team will probably need to take some time to consider this option.

Today was the third and final presentation. All but four groups were able to go today including all of small-scale. As always, it was nice to see the whole project coming together once again and seeing the development of each individual piece. Small-scale guideway is slowing coming together as well. We have most of our FEA done and the factors of safety are looking good. In addition, the final design for the rail bender is about finished as well and is ready to be manufactured.

This week we continued to work on our resigned track bender. We have the general idea of what we are aiming for but will finalize the design very soon. We are currently finishing up the CAD and 2D drawings for it before we start building anything. The entire small scale team was supposed to meet with Dr. Furman but we apparently ran out of time. November 15, 2018 David, Logan and I met with Danial Bolen and went on a tour of Bojo Tools. It was a great experience although most of what he was talking about was beyond my current knowledge and understanding. Danial reviewed our drawings but unfortunately concluded that the parts would be easier to just machine by hand.

During this weeks meeting, the Small Scale Track team started to remodel the rail bender. We basically dismantled the entire setup from last year and are aiming to shift it from its original vertical position to a horizontal position. We came up with the basic idea of what it will look like but it should be finalized by next week. It was saddening to hear about the whole owner/lease situation with the Superway Design Center but im sure everything will work itself out in time.

This week we were finally able to give our presentation since we ran out of time last week. I feel we weren't as prepared as we were last week due to not reviewing it again. We were discussing the idea of injection molding again and seeing how we may be able to thin it out so injection molding can be used. We also began to take apart the rail bender to remodel it. One idea were were discussing was having the bending occur horizontal rather than vertically in an attempt to help preventing it from spiraling.

Today was the day for the second presentation of each group. The time permitted most of the groups to go but ours and the full-scale guideway will be going next week. It was nice to see the progress each group has made since the last project and how everything is gradually coming together. I look forward to what improvements are made for the next presentation.

This week's meeting started off with meeting with our project teams. It seems that the CAD for the piece we will be attempting to try injection modeling on is about finished, which is good. We briefly discussed the direction we will take for the rail bender and the improvements of the track. After that, we returned to campus to listen to Dr. Furman's presentation on mobile technology.