April 11 - Week 11 & 12 Spring 2018

This week we had our second presentations, which discussed our progress over the past few weeks and during our spring break. I went through a couple revisions for the clamping mechanism of our track, and in the end have decided to work with steel plates and threaded rods. These offered enough simplicity and availability for ease of manufacturing as well lowering costs.



In addition to this, the past few weeks we have been reviewing and modifying our designs after finally receiving quotations from Vanderbend. Some of the parts we now have re-evaluate and redesign due to over-budgeting costs as well as too long of lead times. Because of this, many of our parts may need to be fabricated out of plywood instead of sheetmetal to obtain as an accurate as possible representation of the actual designs.

Two things that are required of us are:
i) Conducting a thorough design review of the current drawings, and to produce a second revision of the full-scale structure drawings in wood.


ii) Produce a column support structure with columns and horizontal supports for solar team to install their prototype on top of. To save time and cost, these support structures could be made of wood

 

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