Skip to main content

Team Blog #24

SSST Blog 5/6/20

Progress for the week:

This week the SSST completed the Final Presentation that listed and explained the final design, analysis, and conclusions of each sub-team. Beforehand, many of the objectives that were set forth at the beginning of the year were completed this week. In the following sections, the overall progress for the guideway, bogie, and controls team will be mentioned.

Guideway Team

The team was able to render a solid model of the overall completed track using Fusion 360. The model was imported from Solidworks to Fusion 360, where each part was assigned a material to render. Figure 1 shows an example of the overall guideway, with the pod and bogie hanging on it. 

Figure 1. Render of fully assembled guideway, pod, and bogie.

The y-junction and y-switch rail for the guideway was also completed this week. The guideway team decided it was best to 3D print the third rail so that it could be manufactured in one go. This included supports to which the third rail would hang on, and that support itself would connect to the rods coming from different sides of the track, as seen in Figure 2. 


Figure 2. Render of fully assembled guideway, pod, and bogie.

The presentation included the final design intent for the project, such as how the team would have built the track using a layer caked design as shown in Figure 3. A motion simulation of the track was also produced using Solidworks, showing two bogies/pods traversing around the track.


Figure 3. Top and bottom layers of a straight that are layered over one another.

Finite element analysis (FEA) was also simulated using ANSYS and Solidworks. Based on the results, the team decided that the simulation's results were negligible, as total deformation proved to be less than 0.003 inches. 


Controls Team 

The controls team was able to design two separate apps. One allowed data to be transferred to the BLE and work with the Arduino code. The other was a user interface system app that allowed users to experience what it might be like to use the SPARTAN Superway. A Fritzing diagram was also created to show future students how the components are connected, as seen in Figure 3.


Figure 4. Fritzing diagram of the overall controls

The barcodes for the stations were also presented, showing that the Arduino code would have feedback from the sensors on the Pixycam. A flow chart of the code was created by Asmaa to explain how the BLE would work, as seen in Figure 5.


Figure 5. Flowchart of the Arduino code.

The app created by Julio was also explained, as seen in the video below:



Bogie Team

The bogie's final design included a functional swiveling mechanism, gear ratio, and y-switch used for the pods as seen in Figures 6, 7, 8.


Figure 6. Swiveling mechanism used for the pods



Figure 7. Gears used for the bogie.
Figure 8. Y-switch used for traversing the y-switch rail.

The snap-fit design of the pod allows students to open and close the object to fit parts into it, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. 3D printed pod design

Team As a Whole
Overall, the team was able to complete the main objectives that were tasked at the beginning of the semester. The guideway team was able to design a functional and interchangeable track with a working y-junction. The bogie team successfully designed a swiveling mechanism that allowed smooth movement throughout turns. And both the guideway and bogie team created a y-junction and y-switch that prevented the bogie from falling between gaps in the track. The controls team was able to successfully design an anti-collision system and complete an Arduino control system that connects to a user-friendly iOS app. 

Plans For The Future
The team will be creating a Final Report that will have future suggestions for students to come.

Written by:
Justin Ghieuw
May 6th, 2020

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Team Blog #15

Progress for this week: Controls Team: To become more familiar with the Pixy Cam several tests were conducted throuhgout the week. After the team decided to switch over to barcodes for the stations the team saw that this method was better. A sheet of the 10 barcodes was then printed out and the team tested how accurate the pixy cam was at ientifying the different codes. The team will is now working on trying to develop a test which will incorporate the arduino along with the other electrical componenets. Figure 1: Barcode recognition by Pixy2 Guideway Team: The guideway team made progress on determining how the track will be supported and what materials we will use to build it. The team setteled on using mdf wood with a thickness of .25". The laser cutter cuts the wood accurately and precisely at the maker space, however, the space is only available during the week days from 10am to 6pm. The supporting stands will use 3ft long zinc threaded rods with nots and washers to ...

Team Blog #25

SSST Blog 5/13/20 Progress for the week: Since this is essentially the last blog for the 2019/2020 academic year, and the last major thing that was accomplished this week was submitting the report, there is not that much individual subteam work that was completed. Rather, everyone came together to work on the final report throughout the entirety of the last week. The remainder of this blog will be dedicated to showcasing the final results through images of each of the subteams and also of the Small-Scale as a whole. Controls Team  The final design of the controls team was two separate iOS apps, one allowing to connect and to send data to BLEs to activate the master Arduino code and another solely for a pleasant and informative UI experience. Although ultimately a keyboard was not able to be implemented successfully into the BLE testing app, a slider was added so that depending on its position, different 8-bit unsigned integer values (within a range specified in Xcode) can be ...

Team Blog #19

SSST Blog 3/26/2020 Progress for this week: The Small Scale team met this week to discuss our plan moving forward with our project after the recent changes that are going on. The team decided to continue meeting online via Zoom or Google Hangout to discuss our progress. The meetings will be happening every week. This week we also met as a class with Dr. Furman. We explained our plan with him and explained our schedule that is shown below in figure 1. The schedule shows the main goals of our team for the rest of the semester. Plans for next week Next week is spring break, but the team is still planning to meet to encourage ourselves to meet the deadlines that we set. For controls, the Arduino code will implement the switching mechanism servos. By adding this, the Arduino code will be complete and ready to be used along with the iOS app. The next step for the iOS app is adding a text box that allows the user to type data that can be sent to the BLE. More thing is planned to...