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 comes with the design. However, we are still looking at other options to producing these parts.

Overall, I think we are making good progress.

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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.

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 7 (03-07-18): Welding, Setting Concrete, and Testing

During this week, I hunkered down and completed some of the welding tasks that needed to be done on the hot rolled steel flat bar and the square tubing. In addition to this, Kevin started mixing concrete for us to test the welded pieces on. We started pouring, mixing, packing, and flattening three of the four compelted bases with flat bar and square tubing. While the concrete was curing, I finished up all 80+ welds that needed to be completed for the base. By getting this much experience and repetition in, I was able to get a quick hang of creating a proper weld. and learned to adjust the current levels of the TIG welder in order to control the amperage of the arc and not melt holes through the thin square tubing. We came across another setback and forgot to weld the nuts on the hot rolled steel flat bar, so it looks like 80+ more welds to compelte. I think I should be good and will get this work done by next week.

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

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