Week 10

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 to the normal width once the tracks split. We will also likely need to add an additional support brace for the tip for the tip of the junction, as a support column may not be able to be placed right there.  We will also be changing the top and bottom sections of the track from 2" x 8" to 2" x 6" in order to return the center gap of the track to the Futran spacing, while eliminating some interference with the drain plates on the bottom of the truss.

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