Week 19

While working on presentation for the class, the team has actually met up with Eric, for solar panels and racking ideas to be implemented onto our full scaled design and blueprints. While most of his information was useful, we didn't really include much of it into our report because nothing is set in stone yet. After we presented we just continued to try and further compete our designs for the architects model and wait for our contact from South Africa to send blueprints of their full scaled stump.

Week #18

The team divided into different sections to complete the first presentation of the semester. Making everyone have a certain focus helps cover everything thag each section requires. I was given the section with a "zinger" - or something to hook the audience onto our presentation and understand what our team is trying to do as a whole. Since we were the former full scale track team, we decided to divide the project into two different sections - 1) A full scaled stump with a shorter height and 2) An architect's model to show the different features and facets that we are going to design for the actual full scale model. Each team member has researched different areas and has put everything together for this presentation.

Week #17

With the two new projects in our mind, the team decided to create our own asthetic designs for a potential client. A look to be streamlined instead of clunky. Most of us hand sketched these ideas and further uploaded them onto our team blog for substantial progress. Brainstorming and designing different ideas was a big focus for our team this week.

Week #16

This week the full scale team came to class earlier to meet up with our contact from South Africa who's working on a similar suspended transportation system, Andris. The meeting with Andris was very helpful into figuring out what our team needs to work on during the semester. We've planned to create two designs. One design is an arcitectural design of what the superway could potentially look like. While the other design would be a full-scaled stump of the column, ultimately showing the potential strength and shear volume of our design.

With these two projects in mind, the full scale team has changed our perception onto what our final product and goal is for the rest of the semester.

Week #15

Today, we meet for our final day of instruction of this semester.

With the fabricated wooden pieces ready, we needed to create footings so that the structure could stand up. Fortunately Winter was able to contact a Civil Engineering professor and set up a day and time to get our wooden columns fashioned with concrete footings.

Winter, Claude and I met up with this professor and he squared us away with one of his students to help create concrete footings for our wooden columns. Claude left the CE lab to work on designed the clamps via solidworks on his laptop. Winter and myself stayed to help and learn to process of creating concrete footings by mixing the concrete. The whole process was quite enjoyable since this was both Winter and myself's first time every being exposed to any concrete mixing.

Luckily we were able to finish with the final prototype and brought it to the final class session. During the final class session, everyone presented information in a show-and-tell manner to the instructors.

Good Luck with Finals & Happy Holidays!

Week #14

This week the team had to complete the final presentation, work on the first draft of the final report due later and complete the final prototype. This week was very hectic and stressful, but the team was able to get everything done. Everyone completed their parts on the final presentation after following the grading rubric and its structure.

After we finished creating the presentation, the final prototype had to be created. Winter and I fabricated wood pieces on Friday evening. We were only able to get half of the columns completed by the time we had to get kicked out because it was getting late.

Finally, later Friday evening the first draft of the final report was due, so everyone completed what they could.

Week #12 & #13

This week, we have freshly laser cut materials for our second prototype and now our plan is to assemble everything. We created this prototype to show how they could interlock and connect with each other similarly to how puzzle pieces connect. Now, the team understands the best route of connecting the columns together, This was an important process to go through so we do not run into any complications if we were to work on the metal sheets on our own.

Later this week the team met up with Scott Bryant from Vander-Bend. Vander-Bend is a metal company which has worked with previous members of the Spartan Superway before. The team was accompanied by Dr Furman, Ron Swenson and another sub-team at Vander-Bend's location.

For the 13th week, the team continued to work on the bill of materials in preparation for the end of the semester prototype for the class.