Week #7

During this week, we had to meet up at room 189 for half of our lab meeting. In room 189, we attended an informational presentation about how we should write our report papers. After the meeting, the team gathered at the design center and met up with Ron about new information from South Africa. Ron gave us a lot of useful information and opened our minds to the possible ideas with how we should go about constructing the full scale track. Also, we were given properties, via a magazine, of the steel that we're going to use. This information helps us calculate weight stresses and thermal expansions. We're still waiting for access to the ME labs to start laser-cutting our newly found prototype idea. Also, the new guidelines for the 2nd presentation are finally posted, so we're beginning to develop our 2nd presentation.

Week #6

This week we've finally lifted the weight off of our shoulders after presenting to the class our progress so far. A link to the presentation can be found at the bottom of this blog post.

During class, we were able to visualize how we're going to construct the column designs with Dr. Furman's help reading some CAD drawings. We cut up paper material of the pieces we need to laser-cut and put everything together. Everyone finally was able to see what we're going to try to rapid prototype for preliminary testing. Once everyone went home, we were to research more about different aspects of the project that we'd like to focus on. I continued my research on a type of suspension and if it's still a viable decision for our track.

Link to PowerPoint: Full Scale Team Presentation 1

Week #5

This week we began to brainstorm ideas for our rapid prototyping. Fortunately, we were able to gather some confidential drawings about a similar design from a South African mining company.

While brainstorming we came across many questions:
How we're going to do it?
What section of the full scale are we trying to prototype?
What material are we going to use?

These were answered during this week:
We're going to use a laser cutter from the campus labs.
The column structure/supports.
Cardboard stock sheets primarily.

Also, our presentation about our progress to the class is next week, so more work on the presentation was done. After further reviewing the guidelines, we were missing some important information so we gathered once again later in the week to complete these missing components.

Week #4

During our class meeting, we shared all of the ideas we had via Solidworks. We all liked the CAD drawing that Claude drew, so we mainly stuck with his idea. The following week we had to prepare for our first presentation for the class. Each member is assigned to complete different parameters of the presentation guideline. I was tasked with the research of which type of suspension support would be more ideal for what we're trying to accomplish in the full scale track. By the end of the week, I've concluded that cable stay suspension would be more proficient vs. a suspension cable support. Lastly, the presentation is constantly being updated according to the guidelines.