Sustainable Mobility System for Silicon Valley Project

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 ...

Over the weekend, we drafted a couple ideas on how to create this structure out of wood. Because of the given time constraints, we are set on using half-inch plywood, along with 2x4 beams to create the track as well as columns. After talking with the other teams on how to integrate their parts together, we came up with a canopy like design that will hold the track section on one end and freeing up space on the other. This way during our time in Maker Faire, people would be able to go under to have a closer look at our track while also having room for some shade.  Our initial plan was to go out and purchase 4 by 8 feet of half-inch plywood, however looking around the shop I was able to gather unused wood which can be applied to make the structure. These pieces will be cut using a power-saw provided in the Superway and assembled using nails and wood glue. So far, we will only need to purchase 6 8 feet 4x4 pieces of wood for the columns. If necessary, extra materials can ...

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)...