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Showing posts from March, 2019

March 3, 2019 - Presentation 1

This week, most teams were able to do their first presentation. Unfortunately, our team was unable to go so we could not get feedback on our latest design choices from the other teams. Every team, however, seems as if they are ready to start building their project and prepare it for maker fair. Below is a link to our presentation. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Eki-vqZQgNWR_Ff_LHvOWWdngbZgOFDHx1YnSmC7qXM/edit?usp=sharing The day before these presentations, we were able to cut all of the unistruts for the rail bender. For the base, we decided on double-layering it since the screws ordered were a bit too long for just one board. Most of the unistruts were cut to about 7 inches, except for the sliding unistrust which was cut to 5.25 inches. Next week the team hopes in finishing assembling the railbender.

February 27, 2019 - Finishing Rebuilding Old Track

This week's meeting was mostly devoted to rebuilding prior year's track as it had to be disassembled for the move. However, we seemed to have lost a good portion of the materials originally in place during the move. This includes curves, switch sections, wedges and the entrance rail for the bogey. In consequence of this, we were unable to fully rebuild the track. While putting the track back together, we realized how poorly bent the aluminum rails were to begin with. This further emphasize the need of an accurate rail bender. This meant that not everything fit together as modular parts, which was promised in the previous iteration of the track. Besides the inconsistent bending, sometimes two brackets would not fit together with every metal bracket set. Another issue we came across with is how everything was fastened together. The screw heads were placed on the inside of the rails so that meant to unscrew everything, we had to go in from an angle with a 90 degree bent screwdri