November 15, 2017 - Week 13

This week I reviewed a couple of my current design ideas. The cable idea for the trussing system has now been scrapped, as compression forces will need to be accounted for. The top running beam is too small and flimsy to be able to carry load on its own. Therefore I will need to revise my previous X-bracing design to maximize strength while minimizing the volume.

Other design changes and new designs I have been working on have been the vertical column supports and clamps, as well as making a mounting bracket for the track to attach to the horizontal crossbeam. The difficult part of this task is to determine where the placement of the bracket should lie. As the vertical hangers are very small and have few mounting holes, figuring out the size and orientation of these brackets will be difficult to visualize. After these two parts are completed, I will be able to run a stress analysis on the whole assembly to determine if there are failure points and what may require reinforcements.


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

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

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