Thursday, August 4, 2016

Final Blog Post for the Bogie Team

After we showed our design to the machinist, we were notified that the jack system in our design wouldn't work. One reason was because the jack system would be very difficult to fabricate in the machine shop. The second reason was because we had too many moving parts in the jack system, which would break very shortly due to wear and tear. In order to solve this issue, we had to take our jack system out entirely. However, we still wanted a jacking mechanism in the bogie, so we decided to put a pneumatic piston inside each half bogie that would raise and lower the bogie. The bogie could then be taken to a maintenance station where you could bleed out the air to lower the piston and ultimately lowering the bogie, so that it could be taken off the track. Then after preventative maintenance has been preformed, the bogie could be placed back on the track and an air house could be used to inject air into the piston. This would raise the piston and ultimately raise the bogie against the track. The bogie team is working on finishing up the design to implement the new jack system before we finish our session. Unfortunately, the bogie team didn't have enough time to fabricate the bogie due to the issue with the jacking system.

Monday, July 25, 2016

Bogie Team Update Week of 7/18-7/22

During this week, we spent the majority of our time fixing little changes in our design for fabrication. We created the template for the 2-D pieces to be laser cut. Afterwards, the template and a sheet of MDF wood were taken to the laser cutter on campus, We got our wooden bogie pieces laser cut. There were a few issues where the laser burnt too much material and the dimensions were slightly off. We also sent the metal pieces of our project to a machine shop, where the machinist pointed out any defects in our design. We are working on perfecting these defects in our design.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Bogie Team Update Week of 7/11-7/15

 The beginning of this week our team worked on our posters and presentation for the conference, as well as attending the conference. After the conference, we began working on the fabrication of the bogie. We began cutting and drilling a few metal pieces that will be used for the jack system, but we realized our drill press wasn't drilling precise holes. We decided to cut the metal and then take them to a machine shop to get the holes drilled precisely. For the wood portion of the bogie, we used a laser cutter at the lab on campus to cut each piece out of MDF wood.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Bogie team update for week of 7/5-7/8

For this week we've finished the steering system drawing and assembling, changed the jack system placement and finished the 2D drawings to start producing the wooden/metal model. The motor propulsion system is fully modeled with an actuator on it. Below we can see the final design of the Bogie/Propulsion on the track:
So now the next step is to laser cut the wooden board at the college lab.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Bogie team update for week of 6/27-7/1

   During this week we have been working on motor control and on designing the complete assembled bogie. We have created a program that makes the motor spin at different speeds and have a reverse function. For the design aspect, we have been working on implementing the steering mechanism within our new design of the bogie. We also brainstormed different propulsion systems and began designing these systems. We created a design for the the complete motor involving the motor its selfs, the shaft, and the breaking disk. We also designed the actuator we plan to use and the different propulsion systems we were planning to use. We had some issues in implementing the steering system within our new design, for our jack mechanism started getting in the way. However, after some brainstorming among the team we were able to solve the issues that we have ran into so far.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Team Bogie Presentation #2 6/24

Team Bogie Presentation #1

weekly team blog for 6/20-6/24

6-20-16
Our team came up with a new design for the half bogie that implemented a jack mechanism inside it, so that the bogie would be easier to take off the track and perform preventive maintenance on it. The design went through a review and we had to take into consideration of the torque between each half bogie. Our next goal involving the design of the bogie is to test it on the solidworks track. The control systems subteam researched the circuitry and wiring configurations of the motor and its’ controller. The circuit board that was given had to be debugged to make sure all the components on it were working correctly.The wire configurations had to be debugged due to a faulty battery and incorrect connections of the phase pins from the controller to the motor. The fail safe mechanism and the propulsion system of pushing the motor up against the ceiling was researched and brainstormed. The team also started researching how brakes work and how to implement them onto the motor.
6-21-16
Some changes were made to the design due to our new design of the bogie not fitting properly on the track. The team also began implementing or designing new joints and links on solidworks to connect the two half bogies together. The most important of one was an universal joint that had to be designed, since we couldn’t use a Mcmaster download. This universal joint will be used to make the motion of each half bogie independent of one another and remove the torque between when switching. We were able to get the motor to spin at different speeds using the throttle. To show more detail involving our research and brainstorming of the fail safe mechanism and the propulsion system, a few sketches were drawn of how we would implement these features. Some calculations were performed involving the braking system to determine, which brake would be the best for the motor and the project.
6-22-16
The two halfs of the bogie were put together on solidworks using the new joints and links that were made. Then the new assembled bogie was placed on the solidworks model of the track to run simulations to test it. There were some issues with putting it on the track, so the dimensions of the bogie and track were measured and changed to solve these issues. Basic programs were uploaded to the an Arduino to see how the motor and its’ controller would respond. We were able to get the motor to spin at a constant speed using these basic programs.
6-23-16

 After brainstorming with the team, we decided to change the design of the connection between the bogies. We initially had a universal joint connecting a metal rod in between each bogie, but we changed it to a ball and socket joint. We began developing a program that would spin the motor at different speeds based on the tracks geometry

Monday, June 13, 2016

Files from bogie team as of 6/13/2016

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8qhj8RBPMk9RzlST1JEVExxdW8&usp=sharing

Weekly Proposal for 6-13-2016

Weekly Team Proposals: 6-13-2016

Team Name: Bogie Team

1.       We’re hoping to get the new design model of the bogie ready. It’s almost done, and we only need to finish the last details.

2.       The drawings for SolidWorks are going to be uploaded at Spartan Superway’s Google Drive as soon as we finish the model.

3.       The Critical Path Schedule is to build the wooden model of the new Bogie. The ideal deadline to build this wooden model is 2 weeks and a half after this week.

4.       Budget: No information.

João Vinicius Melo:
1.       Pertinent Skills: SolidWorks, Ansis, Matlab.
2.       Responsibilities: Help the other members of the team from Brazil.

Pedro Celso Pereira Filho:
1.       Pertinent Skills: SolidWorks, tools skills.
2.       Responsibilities: Fabrication of the new wooden design of the bogie.

Vitor Sanchez:
1.       Pertinent Skills: SolidWorks, tools skills.
2.       Responsibilities: Research/design of the braking system.

Luiz Simon Neto:
1.       Pertinent Skills: SolidWorks, Matlab, tools skills.
2.       Responsibilities: Fabrication of the new wooden design of the bogie.

Michael Cahill:
1.       Pertinent Skills: Tools skills, SolidWorks.

2.       Responsibilities: Research/design of the propulsion system. 

Friday, June 10, 2016

Week of 6/05 Bogie Team Update

Bogie Team Daily/Weekly Blog

6-06-16
We started off by drilling holes into pieces of metal and into the top frame of the bogies, so 2 wheels could be mounted at the the top of the frame on both front ends of each half bogie. We sanded down the holes we drilled, so there wasn’t any sharp metal pieces sticking out. Wheels were assembled onto these steel pieces with a threaded shaft and fastened by metal nuts with washers in between. The threaded shafts had to be cut using a metal cutting chop saw.to be implemented into the bogie. We began changing the Solid works model to address these changes
6-07-16
The new steel pieces were assembled onto the bogie. After we did that, we put the bogie back on the track and tested if it would run correctly on the track. At first it ran smoothly, but when we tried to push the other way, it was getting stuck against the wood ceiling, just like before. But we could realize that the new steel pieces that were assembled to the bogie, make it ran way easier than it was without it. Also we had a lot of new ideas for the retractable model of the bogie, we’re planning to start working on that tomorrow.
6-08-16
Two wheels were attached to the back ends of each bogie (where the motors were attached initially) to see if this would correct the issue the bogie was having on the other side of the track.We tried to grind down some extruding welds on the track and on the bogie, but this didn’t solve the problem.  We realized that there may be some imperfections in the track that may be causing some of the issues were having. We began working on a new design in Solid works for the bogie to implement the changes we have done to the previous bogie. The sub teams of propulsion and braking began to research their topics.
6-09-16

We started off the day by organizing the metal in the shop. Afterwards, the mechanical portion of the team continued to work on the new design for the bogie to address the changes that were physically done on the bogie. The propulsion sub team continued to do research and began to brainstorm and sketch different ways to implement an actuator that would push the motor's’ frame to add a greater normal force to the motor and the wooden ceiling.