Week 2: Lightning Talk

Based on last week's blog, the students were already broken down into their specified teams. We are now in charge of presenting a 5 minute lightning talk to show the class what we are exactly doing for the semester. That talk proved to be really important and provided a common ground for everyone to understand the vision for this year's sub-projects.

I didn't realize how much collaboration we are going to be doing, however with the layout of the track, there are plenty of things to consider moving forward such as the design of the track and improvements for future years so that they can easily pick up where we left off. Also, some questions raced through my mind during the lightning talk presentation such as the funding and the implementation of sloped portions of the track for future iterations of the track. Also, there are some issues that need to be fixed with the assembly of the track and how us, as a group, have to tackle the manufacturing for this track, that way it is easier to take apart and present by the time of Maker Fair.

Overall, my group laid out some of the expectations for next week and wrote a to-do list on the team blog. Please refer to that for more information.

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Week 13 (04-25-18): Cleaning up Welded Track Attachments

This week, I focused my efforts on cleaning up some of the welded sections that I worked on last week. Within the square tubing, there is a slight rise that follows along the length of the tubing. This makes it impossible for these parts to slide into the support sleeves that we have already made. In order to finish up these components, I filed them down with a combination of using a Dremel tool with a diamond bit tip and Spartan Superway's file. The first image shows the excess metal that protrudes out of the inside of the square tubing. The next image shows that same protrusion grinded down with the use of the Dremel tool and shop file.

Week 12 (04-18-18): Welding For Last Support Components

On Monday, the team met up and needed to address some of the issues that we had with the welder. Kevin was in constant communication with administration and Dan (from full-scale bogey) to ensure we were taking the correct course of action. Kevin and I took a trip to Praxair to retrieve a new tank of Argon for the remaining welds. After coming back and setting up the welder, I started and finished the welds necessary for the support structures. I encountered some issues during this process as I never found the correct way to properly weld these two components together due to the differences in thickness of the square tubing and the sheet metal. If I utilize too high of a current, the sheet metal would have a hole burnt through. However, if the current was too low, there would be no penetration of the square tubing. Even after completing 80 welds, this process was not mastered and still need to be cleaned up through other methods that will be looked into.

Weeks 10-11: Rapid Prototyping

During these two weeks, the team members got together and worked on creating the straight sections of the track. Throughout the semester, Kevin Brasil has worked on fixing the tolerances for the bracket's lego design, therefore we had enough brackets 3-D Printed and used the drill press and spare fasteners in the shop to put together a working model of what we cadded out on Solidworks. This was completed successfully, and we manufactured 2 straight sections by the end of week 11. During end of the session in week 11, we met up with Dr. Furman and discussed some issues regarding our design and hashed out some of our ideas, manufacturing, and cost issues with him. We suggested downsizing the track from 1.25" 6061 aluminum to 1" 6061 aluminum to reduce the unnecessary costs of the larger parts. In addition, there are sections that are still ambiguous to us, such as manufacturing the curved portions of the track due to the concentricity issues and the tight tolerancing that...

Bryan Oyan - 1/12th Scale Track Design + Manufacturing

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