Nikolas Mifsud Spartan Superway

This week, we got the go-ahead from the guideway team to continue with our current designs. There were concerns that the loss of the wooden guideway would result in major changes to the guideway dimensions, and therefore the bogies. Thankfully, the guideway team has figured out how to utilize the old steel guideway with very similar dimensions to their designs. This means we can go ahead with our shop drawings and beginning ordering materials and fabrication. In addition, we have spoken with other teams to clarify our bogie designs and where their components will be integrated. The wayside power team will be designing an enclosure for their capacitors to be mounted to the slave bogie. We worked with the controls team to spec a set of linear actuators for our route selection assembly. The braking and steering team now has full control of the slave bogie to make their modifications.

To begin the spring semester, we first had to adjust to the many changes that came from our new location for Superway. With the loss of the wooden full-scale track, there were worries that the designs would need major modifications to fit the older steel track. Fortunately, the guideway team has worked to ensure that the track design from last semester will remain mostly unchanged. This means that we can continue with little to no change from our past design. The next week will be spent reorganizing the file structure to make it easier to distinguish new from old files. Also, shop drawings will be made for the parts that must be manufactured.