Week 4

This week mainly consisted of working towards our first presentation and discussing possible issues that may arise when we build our design next semester.   Our biggest manufacturing issue seems to be the rails themselves. The image below shows the Futran rail design used in the guideway. It's a great design for reducing costs as it is made with four interlocking steel plates that are cut and then bent to shape. There are two problems that we realized with this design for our work. First we have not seen any Futran designs for this type of track that are curved, and do not know if they even have one. If we just modify the design to be bent manufacturing it on the small scale we need will likely not be within our budget. As the straight section is made from cut, and then bent metal, it would likely be impossible to bend them into curved section without a roll forming setup.

The other issue we face with this design with the junction itself where the rails much merge.  With this plus shaped cross section, as well as the multiple segments in each rail, it will be very difficult to merge a curved and straight rail together such as in the image below.  To make this geometry possible with the current rail design we would have to either precisely cut and then weld the two rails together while preventing warping, or design a new set of inter-meshing plates that can be assembled into this shape.


In the event that we are unable to come up with a manufacturable design or cannot get enough funding to build the Futran track design we may change the track design itself to some box section steel with the same working dimensions. While it will not be as durable or long lasting for a full production model, it should be move than enough for the proof of concept and test bed that we will be building.