Week 8: Second Presentation, Progress

The second set of presentations began this week, with the 1/12 scale teams presenting their new information from the past two weeks that was not already presented in the first round of presentations.

The work on our bender is going well, matching with the Gantt chart schedule as expected. Testing of actual bending of material is expected to take time, in conjunction with trial-and-error shaping of dies to achieve the bends required by the track improvement team.

Week 7: Gathering numbers

This week we focused on gathering information and numbers from previous year's design and compared with the actual product they produced. The main point of doing this was to see what challenges they met and why the track did not work properly.

The design for the rapid prototype has been reverted to the original design shown in the first presentation, contrary to what was verbally stated during the presentation. This choice was made due to material availability as well as available support options. 

Measurements:

Materials:

Week 6 - Finalize Initial Design & Models

Initial design nears completion. The idea for the original bender appeared to be more work than creating a copy of a Hossfeld, so a change in direction was made. Additional time required to accommodate the design is acceptable, as the plan between this week and the next is to finalize a design to begin construction of.

Access to the on-campus machine shop is yet forthcoming. Investigation into why the process is taking as long as it is will be made this week, as fabrication is to start soon.

Die sizing will be determined by the final numbers from the track team. A 1:1 die will not be used, due to the curvature required being fairly large. Odds are that revisions to die size will be the most time-consuming portion of the project, if bender arms can be fabricated without much difficulty.

See individual blogs' weekly post for more information.




Presentation 1:

Week 5 - Presentation 1, Impacts On Prototyping

The first round of presentations continues this week. Plans for our bender are currently in flux, with requirements necessitated by other teams not yet fully defined. The most significant dimensional requirements stem from the track improvement team, which detail the requirements of the new track. 

Intercommunication continues with all other small-scale teams, as weekly meetings and the Slack group aid in information sharing. 

An updated Gantt chart outlines the goals we aim to achieve and the timeline in which we plan to do so, but the impact of delayed access to the on-campus fabrication shop and special requirements by other teams have yet to be accounted for. However, we believe that there is still ample time to complete a prototype on time, and that we are still on track even with a slightly compressed schedule.