2/8/16

To begin the semester, our Full Scale Test Track team met with Andries, our South African contact, before regular class met. He was able to explain some parts of the interlocking column design that we were having trouble conceptualizing. He also brought a sample section of constructed column, which was very helpful to view.

During class, we worked mainly on deciding what we would construct for the semester, to have completed by Maker Faire. We will be coming up with rough estimates of the dimensions that our basic structure will have. We'll design on SolidWorks some aesthetically pleasing structure of the Y-shaped section that connects the interlocking column to both sides of the guideway. Once we have a couple of designs, we'll send them to our contact who will have his team sketch up some blueprints using exact measurements. From there we will send that information to Vander-Bend to prototype. I'm assuming that once we get our prototype received, we will fill the column with concrete to perform some tests, if time permits.

I'm not yet sure what our individual roles will be. I will probably be maintaining the team blog still. Claude is beginning a SolidWorks model. We will gain more information during our 2/8 meeting session.

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.