Spartan Speedway Individual Blog

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. 

Nothing particularly different happened this week. We first listened to a presentation on facial recognition technology and how it could be applied to the Superway. Honestly speaking, all the technical details were a little beyond my current comprehension. We discussed some adjustments that could be made to the T/Y junction to alleviate some of the current design issues. I also practiced with the rail bender for a little while and it proved rather difficult. As such, we are looking into some improvements for the setup.