This week we spent some time grinding the last of the welds and started assembling the track bender. We had several design challenges and some fit and finish issues, but ultimately succeeded in finishing the new track bender. The process of bending the rails is not as smooth as we had hoped but we do obtain successful bends. One of the challenges is that the caster wheels we are using are not strong enough to resist the force of the bottle jack pressing against them. These will eventually need to be replaced, but they should do fine for this semester.
Today, our team gave a presentation of our current design and calculation work that has been completed so far. The remainder of the class was spent identifying the problems with the current track bender and how it can be improved. Some of the problems are listed below: 1. The wheels used to bend the rails were not aligned. 2. The back wooden plank that is suppose to keep the rail straight was loose and would tend to lean side to side 3. The bottlejack platform was not large enough to keep it in place while bending. 4. The handle bar not being perfectly locked in place also added to the issue of rails not bending perfectly Our proposed solution is to rearrange the track bender to lay horizontally and flat. This would solve most of the problems with the current track bender and in the process of reconstructing it we could improve it further.
Comments
Post a Comment