Week 12

Week 12 Update

For this week, we continued our design of the junction as well as the column assembly. David was in charge of the continuation of the junction and Evelia took on the task of creating a new column assembly now that the column was rebuilt. 

Evelia found that none of the files provided by previous semesters were working. This meant that we didn't just have to rebuild the column, we also had to do all parts of the column assembly. Evelia plans to have this done before the next presentation in order to provide some FEA to the solar team. Below is an image of the column assembly that we will be redesigning.

A few questions we wanted to address:

• What are the overall dimensions of your track going to be? 
• For just the junction section it looks like it's going to be ~2.7 m tall, ~3 m long, and it looks like 5.5-6 m wide at the end of the split, but this won't be fully known until the model is finished.
• How far will the curved section of your track be? 
• We plan to just do the 3 meter section of junction, so if we are able to make it compatible with the current wooden track it will be able to go straight for ~6 meters, or straight for ~3, and then turn for another 3.
• Will your track design mimic the layout of the old metal full scale track that is in the back of the shop?
• We don't think so, we are mimicking the wooden track with hopes to make it out of metal instead of wood.
• I am still curious on how your team plans on supporting the Y-section of your track? 
• The design is still in the works, but it is either going to be supported from the column cross-beam that is supporting the track at the start of the junction, or have its own support column from below.