Blog #4 9/21-9/27

Hi,

This week our team once again met up with the other groups at the beginning of class to ensure we are all on the right path without hindering other groups’ progress. We mentioned how our plan was to completely redesign the track, but the other teams may continue to use the current loops to test their products since the redesign dimensions will not be too different. Afterward, we documented the dimensions and then proceeded to talk about the following week’s plans. Firstly, the presentation was of utmost importance since it was the soonest. We drafted a brief presentation and agreed to meet up again on Saturday to further improve it, which we did. And after the presentation, we plan on starting to stay at campus to start designing on the Solidworks programs on the second or third floor of Engineering building. We have already mentioned this to the other groups that we will be returning to campus after meeting up with everybody for our weekly meetings. However, they will still be able to reach us via Slack (a group chat application) fairly easily and we will be a text message away. Our team has also drafted a few basic designs for what we plan on doing with the mounts and loops for the track. We will be more thorough with the coming weeks, but the pictures are displayed below and the files will be made available to other groups in the 12th scale. Overall, the communication has been pretty good and the 12th scale seem to have a pretty strong foundation.

Track Improvement Team

Initial Track Design and Overview of Previous Week

This week our team noticed that there was a terrible communication issue because there were overlapping tasks and the teams have yet to confront each other. Thus, everybody (from the 1/12th scale) gathered to hold a meeting on how to maintain better communication and future plans. We all agreed that we will be holding weekly meetings at the beginning of each session and that all files will be shared in the 1/12th scale google drive that was set up. This way, it allows people to access the files they need at any time and it will be saved for future years. We also joined an app called ‘Slack’ which allows us to group chat more easily if we needed to ask something urgent since most of us do not instantly reply to Emails (which is different for our phones). After the meeting, our individual track improvement team talked about our plans for the coming weeks. The Gantt chart will need an update after confirmation this following week, but it appears that next week, we will be documenting measurements of the entire track due to the lack of documents and measurements found in the previous reports. And for the coming weeks after a long discussion we decided we will be redesigning the entire track so that we can create a workable design by the end of the semester. As for the other teams, they can use the working loop to test their equipment and addition. Our changes to the new track will not be absurdly different but the measurements will be more precise and smooth, hopefully. As of now, our blogs have been rather short due to the need to establish a proper foundation, but I believe that slowly our blogs will get more extensive and detailed.

The following figures show what we plan to do for improvements of the track.  We will look into changing the design of the bracket since the previous brackets lacked structural support and caused the guide way to slack at key parts of the track which is shown in figure 1. Figure 2 shows that the previous track design has some flaws in terms of making the track easier to manufacture, at least we think it would be easier.  Figure 3 shows how we plan to go about this.  Points A, B, C, and D will all be the same curvatures. Points F and E will also be the same.   We are aiming to basically have two parts built. Figure 4 shows how we plan to attach each loop together since we would want more than one loop.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Track Improvement Update

This week, our team agreed to simply expand on tentative ideas for improving the current track given to us. We spoke with other teams about the bogie and they said that the contact points for the bogie to the track will be the same so that we know there will be no changes needed to the track with respect to bogie. We also agreed with solar team and bogie team that the track will not dip down because we need to focus on creating a working model before making it more complicated. Looking at the current track, the bends are off such that the bogie cannot follow the track autonomously, if at all. There are also different elevations from the floor that were not accounted for so the tracks are not leveled. Some parts of the guide way are more narrow while some are quite wide. Moreover, the curvatures for the track are weak and weakening since the piece relies on a single bolt on both ends. Lastly, the track is not repeatable because some of the stations are on the outside of the track making it asymmetrical. Below is our updated gantt chart with updated deadlines for Maker Fair and Paseo Prototyping.

Track Improvement, Assignment #1

Andrew "AJ" Snytsheuvel, I have solid communication skills, I am also familiar welding, but have not had a lot of practice. ph# 949-285-2498 email: asnytsheuvel@yahoo.com

Jezreel "Jez" Gajardo, I have experience with using solidworks, have used 3D Printers and Laser cutters, decent communication skills. ph# 408-316-9874 email: jezgajardo@gmail.com

Franklin Kha, I have experience with physical assembly of items and pretty good communication/teamwork skills. I have basic knowledge in solidworks and CREO.
ph# (510)857-3222. email: hotnova270@gmail.com

Budget: $5000

Team Responsibilities:The following responsibilities are tentative.
Franklin will be helping mostly with making sure the group is organized and working on reports and assignments in a timely fashion.
Jez is our expert with Solidworks will be are go to on producing CAD drawings and designs.
AJ will be mostly involved with the manufacturing and construction of the track.


Proposed Improvements:

We think we would like to improve the track to make it even more modular. The concept would be to allow each small loop to be manufactured independently, then be able to piece all the loops together to build larger track, similar to Legos.

Gantt Chart