Week 2: Looking Back and Looking Forward

As is mentioned in the team's post this week, there are a number of things that can be done going forward, including determining working fabrication tools, contacting individuals, and looking at what work has been done on the project in the past. Here, I will address a few of those points in more detail below.

In the shop where the project is currently being housed, there are many hand tools and power tools available, but several tools do not appear to be in working order:
1) Such is the case for the band saws (one has a broken shaft (?), the other has a broken guide or some other ailment), and we are looking at having one fixed in the near future.
2) The lathe in the back of the room has apparently been unused for a year or more, and nobody is sure if it works or not. Tests will have to be carried out to determine its usability.
3) There is a mill against one of the walls, but with no power cord nearby, I could not see if it ran last week. Will look into it more this week.

Between last week and now, I have contacted two people who have worked with the Spartan Superway project before, Kyle Meininger and Kenny Strickland. Kyle runs SJSU's central workshop, and has helped fabricate parts for the project in the past. He gave me a tour of the shop, and offered to review or aid any fabrication methods or designs we may create. Kenny worked on the small-scale track during the 2015-2016 year, and he was able to give me some general information about it first-hand, and several points which I will detail below.

1) Methods for track change at stations presented a major problem. Barcodes were dirtied, the bogie passed by too fast to read it, or the physical support for the barcode reader mounted to the bogie broke. Magnets for one reason or another did not seem to work either.
2) Some designs were needlessly over-machined, such as curvature when creating blocks to hold the wheels to the bogies. Simplifications could be made to the design.
3) Due to the thin width of the top rail, bogies were not always forced to travel in the expected paths which provided them the space to fall of the track, especially at some of corners.
4) Bogies would occasionally stop for seemingly no reason after traveling several loops successfully. Teams were unsure whether it was a software issue or hardware issue.
5) Very little tolerance for error was incorporated into the design. For example, the vertical height between the top guide rail and side tracks that the bogie wheels rolled on mandated very specific heights and widths, which were not always met. Additionally, a change to the design of the front ends of the bogies made it such that there were clearance issues when approaching track changes.

Lastly, I will investigate access to fabrication capabilities beyond the project's shop. This will include several workshops on the SJSU campus, the Tech Shop one block away from campus, and possibly several individuals that have their own private workshops.

I will look to add pictures in the coming days to highlight several of the issues above.
See the week 3 post by the team for the images.