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

This is the week before Spring Break and the team is motivated on gaining some headway with this project. The last couple of weeks we have mainly been doing preparation work to get some of the components of the track completed. This week, however, Kevin worked hard to complete the curve sections of the track with his bender mechanism. The completed part can be seen in the figure below: Based on last week's work, the team poured concrete into the concrete molds, found in the image below. This week, the team took apart the molds and cleaned up the concrete that sits on top of the leveling mechanism of the supports. Since some of the molds allowed minimal concrete to spill over, the team needed to break the stray hardened concrete. The finished leveling system is shown below: The team has spent a lot of time in the shop and hopefully, we are able to use this break to regain energy in order to finish strong.

During this week, the team met up a total of 3 times within the week, including the time spent on Wednesday. Throughout the week, I worked on what needed to be finished with the welding for the nuts and hot rolled steel flat bar. With 80+ welds to complete, I was able to work through the 17 bases that we needed welded through. Since the welds were completed, It was time to pour the remaining 17 bases in order to test them out and see how they perform under the given load and unevenness of the ground. We poured, mixed, stirred, condensed, and flattedned the concrete to fit the necessary molds. All we have to do is wait for next week in order to see how the concrete molds formed. I hope it is the same, if not better than the last three that we tested.

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.