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.
This week we obtained all of the rails to be bent and started into the full swing of manufacturing our new curved sections. We have found out how to consistently get bends in our rails using a step by step process. We are following last years advice and having only one person (me) manufacture the rails so that there is not measurement bias or manufacturing differences between users of the track bender. We have begun receiving 3D printer samples from makerspace and found out that they are having great difficulties in getting us our orders, so we will need to revisit this.
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