February 20, 2019 - Finalizing Track Bender Design

Today, the team worked on building some of the track sections so we may better visualize what parts we still need and what kind of brackets and rails the switch sections of our track will need. In general, the team will need about 20 3D printed brackets for our new track. At the moment, the team has two straight sections, two curves, and one switch section built.

The biggest progression to our project, however, was finalizing our track bender design. The main components worked on was how the system will be supported by u-shaped metal rails, attached to a wooden board through 'Z' and 'L' brackets. Two threaded rods will keep the bender connected to the track and with the help of the bottle jack, apply an axial force to the rails. Two 2x4 wooden blocks will hold up the wheels and a soft material will be placed at the end so when part of the rail slides between the supports, there would not too much grinding between the material. We will accomplish this using thin metal sheets or durable plastic. Next week, we begin to build the track bender so we can start the manufacturing of the track itself.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Track Bender and Bojo Tools - November 14-15, 2018

For the meeting on Wednesday, the team continued to work on the track bender. We discussed on the best approach on how we could build the system. There are two possibilities on the final design of the track bender: For the metal rod that's manually turned and used to bend the aluminum bars, we will have both the threaded rods collared onto the metal rod used to build force positioned on top of the board. One threaded rod will actually be positioned below to board. In this case, the pulling force would be more positioned towards the middle of the bending metal rod. Brandon will be bringing drawings of the designs to the next meeting so  that we may present them to Dr. Furman. The following day, the team met with Daniel Brolin at Bojo Tools. Daniel gave us great insight on how to further proceed with the project. He also gave us a tour of the factory and showed us how different manufacturing processes worked. He advised that for our brackets we buy some 4x4 plastic and jus
Read more

Presentation 1 - September 26, 2018

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
Read more

April 17, 2019 - Weekly Blog

This week we were able to finish the rest of the presentations. Maker Faire was unfortunately cancelled and instead Spartan Superway plans on continuing with our own presentations the same weeks to give us a chance to showcase our work and projects. This may have been for the best due to the unforeseen setbacks the team has had to tangle with this semester. Our team was also able to finish all the welding that needed to be done. Our previous design of the track bender was not working as intended, but we expect the new one to work fine. This upcoming week we should be able to finish the track bender and begin testing. All the aluminum rails will be set up to drill and countersink holes in so that we may begin assembly.
Read more