David-Bunker-SpartanSuperway

At the start of this week my main goal was to organize all our CAD files. In doing this I separated as many of the CAD files into a  few different sub-folders, dependent on what the component was for. I also went through and removed all the unused and older revision files to eliminate any duplicates and extraneous files. After getting all the files sorted into the new folders, a few file references had to be updated, as they were referencing duplicate files that were in different folders originally, and then some of the parts had to be renamed to make it more clear what they were. After this was all taken car of, the current set of files was uploaded onto the Superway Archive. The rest of the week was focused on finishing up as much of the final modeling as possible. While I was not able to get as much of this done as I was planning too due to a number of deadlines with other projects, I hope to finish in the next couple days so that we finish our final FEA to include in our repo...

This post is a little late due to traveling last week.  Most of the week was brainstorming how to create a new support truss for the junction itself.  To minimize the number of parts that need to be redesigned, the upper cross beam was replaced with two 2"x4" beams with a couple of mounting plates to deal with the angle change between the two support arms. Work is continuing this week to finish up the rest of truss modifications, and redesigning the mounting plates and connecting bolts that will hold the truss to the support columns as last years team did not post their final files that included their design. The goal is to be completed with the new parts, and have a completed model by the presentation next week.   Figure 1: Current Progress on the truss for the junction.

This week more progress was made towards the junction design. To correct the interfering solids caused by the 8"x2" track rails, those were replaced with 6"x2" ones instead. This also allowed us to increase the opening in the rails back to the spacing from Futran's design. These finalized dimensions can be seen on our team blog.  Lots of progress was made towards the junction assembly as well. The assembly is coming together well. The inner rails where they split off were extended to ensure they meet up with one of the support trusses, and don't need to be joined without a brace, while the angle cut in the bent was was fixed to ensure there is no gap between the rails. This part is circled in red in the figure below. I am currently brainstorming how to design the new truss parts to support the widened track at the junction, as well as the junction it self, and plan to have a working design done this weekend.   Figure 1: Current Progress on the Junction....

After giving our presentation this last Wednesday we got some good feedback from Ethan and Professor Furman regarding our design, mostly focused on the track cross section itself.  Instead of having the track bent when we build it for Maker Faire, we will instead cut straight segments at angles to get an overall curve diameter of 8m, similar to a stone arch, and put a think sheet of metal on the inside of the track to keep it smooth. Evelia worked on preliminary designs of this and images are on the team blog. The start of this week was focused on remodeling the support columns to fix the interfering solids so that it could be analyzed properly. Following completion of the column, I started working on the new junction assembly. The figure below shows the base of the work that needs to be done. The support structure at the end of the first truss segment needs to be widened to accommodate the widening track, but there appears to be more enough enough room to quickly switch the back...