October 11, 2017 - Week 7 & 8

Milotek has not given us the full drawings on the vertical columns as well as the track yet. I have decided to start producing drawings for the trussing as well as creating a layout of the columns. So far, these are the designs I have created:




The top shows the original design I had in mind for the cross bracing of the vertical supports. However, I realized that this will use a lot of material, and the manufacturing process of this would be extremely difficult. I decided to create the two below drawings, which feature multiple parts. The cross structure is reversible, so it can be manufactured/installed more easily. While there are more parts to be made in the second design, it prevents a lot of wasted materials as well as making it easier to manufacture.

I have also started to work on the vertical columns for the track and have nearly finished. What's left is to create a clamp design that will support the horizontal beam to the vertical columns, as well as clamping for the track itself to the horizontal beam.




After the full structure and clamping is finished, I will need to work on the curved section of the track, as well as design the switching mechanism.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May 9 - Week 16 Spring 2018

Image
This week we finished up on assembling the vertical and horizontal columns. We are pretty much finished with our structure, and will just need to install the track as well as horizontal bracings to prevent the majority of the flexing. The next steps we will have to complete this weekend are to finish mounting our tracks onto the supports, as well as finding a way to secure these horizontal supports onto our vertical columns. After that we will just need to install additional 2x4 pieces of wood onto our horizontal beam. This is due to our length of the structure just being a couple inches shorter than the solar canopy. To accommodate for this we will need to extend it so that their supports will line up with our horizontal column and mount onto it.
Read more

April 25 - Week 14 Spring 2018

Image
Today we continued to work on making our track section of our structure. With some rough sketches completed, I was able to figure out how to set up all the material and how they would all be assembled together. These rough sketches were also to be used to send to Futran, letting them know that the structure we were building did not violate the NDA signed with them as we will be needing to bring it to MakerFaire for display. The vertical columns are made out of simple 4x4 beams and no longer utilize the Solomon's knots. The track section is only composed of several pieces of wood held together horizontally and vertically. This design does not incorporate any of Futran's track designs so should not have any affect towards the NDA signed. Focusing on the track section, we used 4 pieces of 10 feet 2x6 wood, clamping two with each other through using wood screws and glue. In addition, we added blocks near the ends of these beams for reinforcement as well as areas
Read more

March 14 - Week 8 Spring 2018

This week we finalized the 2D drawings as well as PDFs that will be sent over to Vanderbend later this week. Hopefully we will get a quotation soon so that we can begin manufacturing on all the necessary parts to create our full scale structure. We are hoping that while these parts are being manufactured, other things can be researched such as the clamp design and the proper bolts that we will need for this structure. In addition, we will need to prepare for a bi-monthly meeting where we will need to meet with Gary via Skype. We will need to present our progress on our Statement of Work with drawings, PDFs, and other files to verify that we are on track. We will also review the SoW to address any issues with Gary that has come up as well as answer any questions he may have regarding our progress.
Read more