David-Cabezas_SJSU Spartan Superway

Today our team presented our design concepts and project challenges for this semester. I discussed with the class the current design of our hanger brackets and how we our improving upon last year's. I also talked about the challenge with using the track bender and how it does not give us accurate bends. I explained the thought process with deciding on the grade of aluminum we would be using and each of the team member's roles. Professor Furman made a great suggestion on utilizing a joining plate instead of thicker hanger brackets so it could ease the manufacturing of the brackets and so their only job will be to hold up the rails instead of also connecting them. For next week, I will continue to work on our CAD drawings of our brackets and keep in contact with Daniel Brolin to further discuss injection molding our parts. Presentation 1

For today's session, we presented the improved proposal and discussed our design goals for the small scale track. After the proposal, we met up and discussed with the other small scale teams to make sure we were all on the same page. I took pictures of the track, specifically of the parts we need to improve, so that we could have visuals for our presentation. Next session, I will prep for the presentation and begin sketching/drawings for our design ideas. I will also look into injection molding and if that could be a possibility for our project.

Today the team met up with Kevin Brasil, our small scale team coach, and discussed our design requirements for this year's track. I asked him questions on how we could possible improve their brackets and the steps they took to assemble the track together. I took notes on how the bottle jack bender worked and what design specifications were established by last year's team that our 2018-19 team could use for our iteration of the small-scale track. Kevin also suggested using injection molding for the brackets to save some time instead of using a 3D printer, which would take three hours for each indivdiual piece. For the next meeting, I will be focusing on the design specs and based off what Kevin said, how we can improve the third rail and curved sections of the track. I will also research on how I could create an injection mold for our brackets that we would need for our design.

At the team's third meeting, we presented our first Lightning Talk to the rest of the Spartan Superway team. In the presentation, we discussed what the previous year's small track team achieved. We also discussed how our goals for this semester's iteration of the track is to introduce bulkier brackets and to level the track with a better support design. After all the presentations were over, the team discussed our potential deliverables and objectives for this year. I also took pictures of the previous track for reference and for future use in presentations. For the next meeting, we will have written our project proposal and hopefully would have made contact with our coach to discuss funding and scheduling. Below is a link to the Lightning Talk 1 PowerPoint presentation using the assertion-evidence template. Lightning Talk 1

On Wednesday 8/29, I met up with the small scale track team and exchanged contact information. I was able to take a look at the work of the previous teams and observe the work of other teams. For the next meeting, I will review the Spartan Superway archive and read through the report from last year's team to learn where they left off and what needs to be improved.