Week 5 (February 6,2019):Latest current pick up mechanism and current rail design

For the past week, the team have modified the current rail and the current pick up mechanism.

The figure above represent last year design.

the figure above is the latest design

The figure on the right is the mechanism that will make contact with the electric current rail. the legs (L-shaped) are design to fit the the width of the overall Guideway track.

the following figures represent the location of the mechanism on the slave bogie and will also hold the Ultracapacitor bank right above

the current rail have been modified to meet the latest constrains form other team. for example the Guideway will have limited track therefore it was necessary to built an additional track for our mechanisms to function.

The latest current rail design have been modified as well to have a slope for the current pick up mechanism to make contact with the carbon brush

since we are designing a passive current pick up mechanism that does not required external power, we are relying on height and weight to make contact with the rail. Moreover, last years research shows that on higher voltage the carbon brush can pick up current with less than 50 N force contact, in fact it was need approximately 1kg weight or 10 N force

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WEEK 12: 3D printing for Prototype

This week is spent 3D printing all the parts for the prototype. The CAD is coming along however 3D printing takes longer because we depend Makerspace availability. This is the 3D printed part that will be attached to the body of the slave. The plans is to secured, fixed (bolted) one side on the torsion spring (the outside) and apply a force on middle legs. this will counteract the force applied and create the 50N we expect. It was important to design a housing for the spring so we can attached to the spring and to legs. We are making iterations as we continue receive all printed parts. One important factor was how to hold on to the leg. the next figures show the the changes. These two figures are parts of the mechanism that will house the legs on the middle section. as we continue with these models we realized many iterations that have to made and prototyping provide the opportunity to see that. the two figure will replace the middle sections housing.

Week 14: Current Contact Analysis

The carbon brushes we intended to use are the Helwig Carbon products (fig.1). They are electric current collectors. It is important to anticipate how current behaves as load is applied against it. previously we have mentioned we need 50 N contact force. However, applying unnecessary load is not ideal because it creates friction which adds additional friction for the bogie to overcome. Additionally, the brushes wear at a faster rate. working with Tynan, it was important to find how the current behaves with increasing load to find the ideal load and the performance of the current collector. the figures above represent the T shaped current rail sitting on an insulator. We tested our analysis multiples weights as shown below Mass added on top of the current rail the results shows that adding more weight does not necessarily mean more current. For the graph above, testing for 2.5 V supplied the current collected by the carbon brush starts behaving uniformly aft

WEEK 6: CAD drawing submitted for fabrication

The week after presentation, helped me to address very important details regarding the current insulator and rail. Also, it helped few modification on the current pick up mechanism to pivot about a joint. I have addressed those details as shown in the figure below. Using SolidWorks, I was able to calculate the tolerance angle as the current pick up mechanism is raised for a maximum on 1 in. a 10 degree angle will be used on the top pivot point. Additionally, I have sent the final drawing to Turpo Manufacturing company for fabrication. They will be machining some on the parts on this mechanism in exchange of advertising. finally I'll be working on the unistrust channels which will hold our current rail.

Daniel's Spartan Superway Project

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