Spring 2018 Week 9: Creating a Curve!

March 21, 2018

Next week is going to be SPRING BREAK, so the team collectively worked hard to ensure we wouldn't fall back when we returned after the much-needed break. With Kevin's bender added to our toolset, Kevin decided to manufacture one of the four curved sections of the track. The tolerances with this build proved to be difficult because if the track's rails proved too wide, the bogey would fall off or if they were too snug the bogey would bind and stop moving. The team had to keep these issues in mind so that we don't have any problems during Maker Faire. With this in mind, Kevin finished manufacturing one of the four curved sections and we're collectively waiting for the bogey team to test the assembly to validate our manufacturing techniques. The following image displays Kevin's manufactured curve sections.

While Kevin worked on the curved sections, Angelo and Bryan manufactured two sets of straights to mount and test the bracket's connections. The following image displays our team's current progress:

Spring 2018 Week 8: Supports + Bender

March 14, 2018

This was a productive week for the small-scale track team. The team spent a total of three full days out of the week in the SSDC to complete more manufacturing work. Since Bryan was designated with the welding duties, he finished tack welding all of the nuts on the support structures. In addition, the sleeve that is found on the top of the support assembly was made this week as well. Kevin and Angelo worked to prepare these components by cutting up the square tubing in a 45-degree angle and drilling holes into them so that a weld nut could be welded into the component. This week we finalized all of the support leveling structures and started cementing all of these parts.

  

Since progress with the support structures was coming along nicely, the team looked ahead and wanted to tackle the issue with bending metal into concentric bends. Since the previous track manufacturing team's metal bender proved to create a bow with the bent aluminum, we could not utilize the methods they used last year. Kevin put together his own version of a metal bender utilizing some spare parts around the SSDC. By testing this mechanism and creating some bends, it proved to work well. This was a promising development within the team. Moving forward, we are going to tackle how to manufacture the curves and switch subassemblies that are essential to this track's design. The image for Kevin's metal bender can be found below:

Spring 2018 Week 7: Welding and Cementing Supports' Leveling System

March 7, 2018

This week proved to be productive for the team because we made significant headway with the support structures of this year's track design. Bryan was finishing up the last bits of the welding for the support structures' leveling system. Meanwhile, Kevin and Angelo worked to seal these components together by mixing up concrete and preparing the molds to fit the manufactured components.

Luckily, we only managed to cement three of the welded components because there was more welding that needed to be done. The hot-rolled steel flat bar needed to have nuts welded onto the holes that were drilled into them. The three support bases that are cemented will be tackled last because the concrete still has not hardened. This adds on to the laundry list of manufacturing the track team will have ahead of us in the following weeks.