Full-Scale Track Section Fall 2017

This week we started our first meeting with Futran, giving a run through of our progress as well as addressing what we need to finish. We have so far finished dimensioning the 2D drawings and have sent them in for review to Vanderbend. We are hopeful in receiving a quotation for all the parts by Friday, and can begin purchasing early next week. In addition, we need to revisit the part drawings of the Solomon's knot columns that Lalith had sent over to Vanderbend in order to use them for the full-scale drawings. Afterwards we can finish up the column-track clamping design after Keon has finished implementing his third rail design into the system. Once these are completed, we can start running tests for the finite element analysis of our new structure.

The past week we reviewed our designs, while also simplified our Scope of Work that will be sent to Futran for funding. This will need to be accompanied by fully manufacturable drawings for each part that will be used in our track. In addition to our Statement of Work, this week was the beginning of our first presentation. For this presentation we discussed our current design progress, fabrication plans, as well as a budgeting timeline that we will need for manufacturing.

This week we have finalized the scope of work to present to our client. If approved, we will have the go ahead to mobilize on the build. Our main requirements are solid engineering drawings that demonstrate the interface of all the track components. After approval, we will start purchasing the materials that we need.

This week we had our Lightning talk of the semester. We went over project requirements, bill of materials, progress, and main things we will need to do in order to receive project funding from Futran. Our project has been distributed into 3 main sections which will help with project funding allocation.

For the start of the Full-Scale team this semester, Ron Swenson requested to see our finished Bill of Materials as well as provide the order in which parts will need to be purchased. This way, there will be ample time to supply production with essential parts and be able to smooth out our construction. Ron is also expected to request more input from Futran in regards to the project design as well as parts/materials. Thoughts of reducing our 9m length track to 3m have been considered if the required funding cannot be met. This well help allow us to focus on revising our designs without having to consider a complete overhaul to reduce costs.

In the last weeks we have been working on rapid prototyping our parts . We have then been able to put together the final presentation 3 which was presented on November 11th, 2017. From the presentation we will move forward by providing a full Bill of Materials by next week and then start to working on the final report.