Week 7

This week was focused on developing the new track cross-section into a working design. While Evelia worked on the third rail design, I worked on the new track design, as well as modifications to the truss.  With the new track cross-section we need to modify the existing mounting system on the support truss as we will need to support the new track from inside the cross section, instead of one of the corners of the plus shaped design from Futran/Milotec.

From viewing Evelia's work, I realized that we must also modify the current truss structure to proceed with our planned direction for the curved sections. As the current truss structure is a straight design, the straight braces on the top and bottom of the track, shown in figure 1 below, must also be curved so they do not interfere with the curved track design.
Figure 1: Conceptual Curved Track with braces requiring bending circled.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 14

This week we made a decent start on our final build. I was not able to get as much as I wanted done due to limited access at the times I was available. On Thursday I was able to get all the new hangers for track junction welded together with the parts that Master Metal supplied.  While I was doing that Evelia was able to make a trip to pick up the lumber for our other track modifications. On Tuesday Evelia was able to pick up the rest of the lumber we will need to build the track as well as the bent pipe for the third rail. I was able to cut and tack the crossbeam supports for the third rail into place and plan to fully weld those into place tomorrow as well as finish preparing for our final presentation on Friday.
Read more

Week 4

Image
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.  Wit...
Read more

Week 10

The past 2 weeks have meet with some progress on our project. Evelia tried to rally enough people on the Monday of spring break to get the track components moved over to the new location, but was unsuccessful due to it being break. How ever we were able to get enough people to move the junctino portion of the track this Monday, and were able to successfully move the rest of the track during our meeting time today with the help of the rest of the Superway Teams. While Evelia tackled getting the track moved I took the time to contacted all of manufacturers from the list to see if any of them would be able to fabricate out third rail design. Sadly none of the manufacturers in the area that I was able to find are able to bend 2" steel tubing around the corners. This hinders our plans and gives us two options that I can think of. Widen our range of where we get the third rail manufactured. This might allow us to find some more industrial fabricators capable of this, but will drast...
Read more