12/7/16

As we near the end of the semester, my team and I have been rushing to make sure we have everything completed in time. We presented our final presentation on Wednesday, 11/30. It seemed to encompass much of the same material that was presented in our second presentation, plus progress we've made this far. However, neither Eric nor Ron had questions for us at the end, so I hope that's a good sign.

My team and I are working on our report draft that's due on Friday, 12/2. My responsibilities for the paper will be writing the abstract, acknowledgments, introduction/project description, and conclusions/next steps. I don't think it'll be too difficult to write the paper, though I do worry that we haven't done enough work throughout the semester to make up for our lack of background as a new team.

Finally, I picked up the materials for our final prototype from Home Depot. I got 16 feet of 4x4 wood and 8 feet of 2x2 wood. We will mill the 4x4 wood to resemble our interlocking column structure, then we will show how the clamp mechanism works in assembling an arch with a mock guideway resembled by the 2x2. I also picked up quikrete instant concrete for the footings, though I'm not yet sure what mold we will be using.

UPDATE:
On Friday, I worked in the ME machine shop to cut the chamfer cuts into the wood slabs to mimic the shape of the interlocking column design. The process was long and arduous since the wood posts were 3 feet long, so we were only able to mill enough to design one arch. In addition, the wood was extremely heavy so we probably wouldn't have been able to carry two anyway.

On Monday, I went back to the shop, and with Roger (the technician) and Kevin's help, we cut out the area where the crossbeam would connect to the support beams.

On Tuesday, with Professor Akthem Al-Manaseer and CE student Rami's help, Kevin and I created the concrete footings. This process took a couple hours but it was a helpful learning experience for next semester, when we will be attempting to fill the steel columns with concrete and make more detailed footings.

11/30/16

On November 18th, we met with Scott Bryant at Vander-Bend to discuss our prototype for next semester. Here is what we learned (which is mentioned in our team blog as well):

• Our model will be laser cut, since we want a thickness of around 3 mm which is about 1/8 inch steel. Their laser cutters can cut up to 3/8 thickness, if thicker, water-cutting is utilized.
• The laser cutters accomodate up to 60x120 inches of material. This is more than the typical standard of 48x120.
• Vander-Bend doesn't handle casting painting, injection molding, etc. -type services.
• They manufacture a lot for the hospital industry, fuel cells, fruit industry, etc.
• We will make a model of what we need constructed on SolidWorks. We will construct the 3D model of it so that they can assemble as portrayed. They will need the step file and drawing.
• Our model will be cold-rolled steel, either 10-10 or 10-08. Bend radius of 1/32 inch.
• Claude will talk with Andres.
• Manufacture time will be at least 3 weeks, so we need to plan around that.

It seems that Claude is handling much of the prototype, as far as CAD modeling goes. I am working more on these blog posts, but we will focus on the Bill of Materials in the next coming days, as well as the rough draft of our Final Report. Our end-of-semester prototype will hopefully be to create a model of how the column connects to the guideway and the footings.

Furthermore, I've been in contact with Professor Al-Manaseer of the CE department to see if we could gain access to the concrete for fabricating our simple footings for now. This would hopefully imitate how the footings would react when placed into the ground for support. We aren't 100% sure yet if our model should utilize one column/footing or two, since there isn't much time left, but we will know in the next few days.

11/23/16

For this week, we finished our second rapid prototype, per Ron and Dr. Furman's request. The model was constructed out of a thicker cardstock material for strength and reinforcement, because the previous paper model was too flimsy to stay together. Regardless of this change, the model was still flimsy, unfortunately. Once we construct a model out of steel, the columns will hopefully behave much better.

This prototype portrayed how a longer column structure would be built. Ideally, the columns would be very long so that the Superway podcars would sit high above the streets and pedestrians below. However, it would be difficult to find a manufacturer who could laser cut and bend strips of steel around 30 feet long. So the purpose of this prototype was to model interlapping pieces to elongate the structure. This is visible in the two following images.

          

The second image shows how the inside of the model appears. Once filled with concrete, it would prove to be extremely solid and integrally strong.

On 11/18, we met with Vander-Bend manufacturing. I will talk about that in the next blog post instead.

11/16/16

This week, I was spearheading communication with Vander-Bend, specifically with Scott Bryant. My team, along with the small-scale track development team, will be meeting with the company to discuss methods of fabricating our interlocking column design, as well as obtaining a cost estimate for the services they are able to provide. We are all new at manufacturing so we hope to glean a lot of information through this.

We also worked on our second rapid prototype, which is the interlocking structure again, but with zippered parts so that we can extend the length of the column. We laser cut the parts today (Tuesday) and will be working on assembly tomorrow.

11/9/16

As stated in our group's blog post, we've just finished our presentation. From here on we will be focusing on constructing our prototype, which will be a small scale of the columns, footings, and guideway, focusing on the methods utilized to connect everything securely.

We also have a writing assignment due. The topic is mobile technology.
More specifically, we had to describe the effect that mobile technology has had on us. I took the stance that mobile technology has widened the divide between people from different cultural, racial, and ethnic groups in the United States.

I believe that mobile technology has created "the digital divide," the economic and social inequality with regard to access to information and communication technologies. Digital communication has been enhanced, sure, but it has aggrandized the cultural, racial, and ethnic divide throughout the world. Our identities are no longer our own. And for proof of this, you can check out the election results.

11/2/16

This week is much slower, since we pretty much have the bulk of our presentation finished, yet we will be presenting November 2nd. We met with Ron, Dr. Furman, and Eric on Monday to get further guidance and help on our calculations.

From the meeting, it was decided that our prototype will basically be a paper model, in which we demonstrate new footings and methods to connect all the pieces together. We will attempt to fabricate a small section of the guideway as well, with columns (about four feet tall) and some sort of clamping mechanism, which hasn't been decided on yet.

Our group presents on Wednesday. I will be presenting the initial scope of our project, as well as our projected schedule and deliverables.

10/26/16

Following up on my task given to me by Claude a couple weeks ago, I was finally able to use his tape measure to go around downtown San Jose, measuring the widths of streets and sidewalks, to prepare for design of the space Spartan Superway could take up currently. Here are my results:

Jackson St. near 5th St.

N sidewalk 178, parallel (||) parking 99, street (two way) 275, diagonal parking 224, S sidewalk 182

4th near Washington

W sidewalk 161, parallel parking 94, bike lane 74, street (two way) 265, bike lane 101, || parking 101, E sidewalk 177

4th near St. John

W sidewalk 121, || parking 110, bike lane 134, street (one way, two lanes) 325, || parking 101, E sidewalk 177

2nd near San Fernando

E sidewalk 188, street (one way, two lanes) 289, midwalk area 186, lightrail 110, W sidewalk 177

San Carlos near Market

N sidewalk 118, N side of street 300, lightrail area 290, S side of street 259, S sidewalk 172

San Fernando near 6th

S sidewalk 205, || parking 85, bike lane 94, street (two way, with center turning lane) 407, bike lane 90, || parking 90, sidewalk 175

11th near San Fernando

E sidewalk 146, || parking 106, bike lane 75, street (one way, two lanes) 328, || parking 88, W sidewalk 176

Claude will use this information for his SolidWorks designs.

For this week, I am working with my group to formulate our Presentation 2. We've spent a lot of time working on this presentation, as we were lost with our direction last week and we are slowly regaining our plans. We've finished cutting out our laser-cut rapid prototype and just need to assemble it. The other members of the group are working on calculations. I'm focusing more on goals and deliverables, as well as problem statements, comparisons, and anything that is general to the presentation.

10/19/16

We didn't do too much this week since we are backlogged on gaining access to a working laser cutter to create our rapid prototype (interlocking column). Mainly we just met with Ron to discuss the information he found out in Europe about a project similar to Spartan Superway.

This week, I will be using a tape measure to measure the width of streets and sidewalks all across San Jose. I will also be researching anything else I can find about vibrations in railway systems. Furthermore, I'll be preparing the group for Presentation 2.

10/12/16

This week we focused on our rapid prototype and development of the interlocking column design. Basically, the pieces we will laser-cut look something like the picture on the left, and will resemble something like the picture on the right when assembled. We hope to gain access to the ME lab within this week so we can construct our prototype.

Furthermore, this week I turned in my first writing assignment, regarding Spartan Superway's implications involving global, local, environmental, social, and economic issues. This essay reflected on the project's potential difficulties in implementation with respect to the city of San Jose, including possible other cities to follow.

10/5/16

This week, we were supposed to present our group presentations, but there was insufficient time. We will present on 10/5 and it'll be so great and deserving of an A+.

Last week, my task was to design a rough sketch of what the new guideway would look like. Here are some screenshots of my designs:

We compiled our designs and decided to go with Claude's design with some renditions.

This week we will be working on designing new structure beams. It'll feature a design similar to the Solomon's knot, with interlocking steel pieces filled with concrete. We've been coordinating with a team located in South Africa regarding a design still in the works. We'll compare with Bengt's design and decide which we like better. Furthermore, we will work on a rapid prototype made out of cardstock or some similar material, using a laser cutter.

9/28/16 - Paseo Prototyping Challenge

This post refers to the Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge. The purpose is as follows:

The Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge is designed to incubate solutions to pressing social and environmental problems through multidisciplinary collaboration and technological innovation.

Multidisciplinary student teams from San José State University will be selected, mentored, and provided seed funding to develop civic innovation prototypes for presentation at the Paseo Public Prototyping Festival – an arts, culture and technology festival held at the newly opened SJSU/ Hammer Theatre Center in Spring 2017.

I attended the launch on 9/21/16. Here are some dimly-lit pictures proving that I was present:

              

The launch began with several important people discussing how important it is that people collaborate to fix a problem within the community. I've listed the speakers below.

• Dr. Lisa Vollendorf, Dean of College of Humanities and the Arts
• Danny Harris, Knight Foundation Program Director
• Paul Lanning, VP of University Advancement
• Sid Espinoza, Director of Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at Microsoft

These people all had the same general message. San Jose focuses on tech and innovation, yet our community is filled with rising housing prices and homelessness. We are the next generation of change and the leader of social movements. We need to shift our political attention to sustainable cities. Goal of zero bike and pedestrian deaths. Basically, this challenge is supposed to be the appeal to young people to fix the problems that the old people created, as is the case often for engineers. Our challenge is to prototype something cool with the chance to win $10,000. They even gave out raffle prizes of Intel Arduino and Edison and a Microsoft Edge 4. Personally, I think the raffle prizes were unnecessary and the event was a bore. But the cookies afterwards weren't half bad.

9/21/16

This week we are focusing more on specifications of how we will construct our new test track. Ron guided us towards how we should be tackling our tasks for the next couple weeks and we've brainstormed what to do if a car should crash into one of the support beams. The list of possibilities can be found on the Full Scale blog: http://fullscaletesttrack-2016-2017.blogspot.com/

We've decided on a layer of aluminum surrounding a layer of protective foam surrounding the support beam. I had thought it would be a neat idea to combine the two layers by using 

Duocel® aluminum foam, which is porous aluminum. Here are the specs:

Upon further research, this would've been too costly and perhaps not strong enough to withstand the force of a car crash, which we estimated to be around 3,336,000 N of force. Thus we decided on aluminum, which is ductile yet light, on the outside. The inside would be some kind of foam so the vibrations from hitting the aluminum wouldn't shatter the beam itself. Some materials we're looking at are HR polyurethane (commonly used in mattresses) and ethafoam. For future use, we thought we might contact this company http://www.houseoffoam.net/contact.htm for assistance because they're local.

Next, I need to design a test track rough estimate of a model on SolidWorks. Since none of us know the dimensions of the bogey, it'll be interesting to see how our models turn out.

9/14/16

Updates

I'm very relieved that we've finally been given some guidance on what exactly is the goal of our project. It was strenuous to be tasked with a completely new project that none of the teammates had any knowledge on. I'm sure over time we'll become more accustomed with vibrations, but it's still very daunting right now.

I'm excited to start designing what the new guideway will look like, though I'm a bit disappointed it won't incorporate any changes in bogey design, since we have to use the current bogey in our testing. (It has a ton of wheels!) SolidWorks will be fun to use again, and I'm interested in learning more about the built-in load testing features. I'm especially interested in learning about shock absorbers and integrating them into the new suspension design. It will hopefully turn out well! I'm a little apprehensive that I've been chosen as the team leader, but hopefully my team will be there throughout the whole process to support the work we're doing together.

Failures/Successes from Past Work

My name is Winter Saeedi. Here is a picture of myself.

My project team will be working on the full-scale test track, which involves footings, columns, guideway, and expansion joints. My interests mainly lie within the realm of vibrations and acoustics, so we’ll see how well these topics merge.

This blog post focuses on the failures and successes from past work that relates to my project team. As a disclaimer, I have no past work that relates to this team project. However, I hopefully have sufficient skills and education relevant enough. I have a background in music and I’ve taken plenty of physics and engineering classes, so the foundation has been laid out. Furthermore, I spent this past summer interning at Seagate Technology, so I have work experience in a technological field. At Seagate, I worked on several projects relating to the sputter tool conveyor system. My team recognized that my aptitude was centered around mechanical design, so I designed numerous parts using SolidWorks, and was able to follow these parts from conception to manufactured deployment.

I will be focusing on vibrations for this year-long project so I hope to gain valuable skills surrounding this topic. I’m concurrently taking the course on Vibrations and Controls, so I’ll be learning a majority of the information throughout the semester. One of my greatest challenges during my internship with Seagate was that I lacked the knowledge necessary to further the complexity of the projects I worked on. Sure, I learned best by immersing myself into projects unknown, but it was much more difficult than already having the knowledge beforehand. I’ll be recreating that scenario again through my work with Superway.

In the past, I’ve also worked on a few group projects in several various college courses. In my design class last semester, my team designed a pedal-powered baby rocker, utilizing our knowledge of geometric, force, and stress analysis. We learned as the class progressed, so while the task was daunting at first, ultimately we finished with a viable model and plethora of new information. I look forward to learning more about the basics of the guideway and furthering my knowledge on top of that to become a worthy team member of Spartan Superway.