Spartan Superway

This week I met with professor Muntz to see if we would be able to use the machine shop in the industrial studies building.  He said that we technically need to take the course to use the machine shop, but that if we were doing something very simple (such as threading a rod) that we could use it.  We really need access to a machine shop for welding, and I have reached out to the machine shop in the mechanical engineering building to see if we can gain access.  We continued trying to assemble the track and found that the situation was worse than we initially thought.  Much of our material that we have planned to use for rail bending appears to have been misplaced or scrapped during the move.  We will need to order new aluminum sections to replace and expand the track.  Many of the pieces do not fit together as they should and need a matching mate to work correctly.  This is leading to a constant guess and check of the track.  We are set on the new...

Over the past week I completed the track bender design and pitched the concept to Dr. Furman.  He had suggestions to the design which I implemented and redrew.  I ordered the majority of the parts that we need, but the parts & pieces that are missing from the move have not been ordered yet.  We have a meeting next Wednesday with Professor Muntz to see if we have machine shop access.

This week we started to reassemble the track and realized that many of the pieces do not fit together as they should.  Each curved rail has a specific mate that it must match with.  It has led to a very frustrating trial and error of trying to reassemble the track.  Additionally, we are certain that many important pieces of the track are missing and will need to be rebuilt.  This led me to focusing on making headway on the track bender so that we can get the track back to working order. 

This week we had several presenters come in to speak about Spartan Superway.  They included a former congressman and a current private industry ATN professional who is a former BART engineer.  The ATN professional had lots to say to the small scale track team and based on his slideshow and discussions with Dr. Furman we are going to attempt to reorganize the track layout.