Nikolas Mifsud Spartan Superway

This week was our final presentation as well as the prototype showing. Our presentation went extremely well even though we unexpectedly had to present first. After the presentation, we watched the other teams' presentations. The full-scale teams were first, followed by half-scale, and then small-scale. The prototype drive bogie was finished on Friday, May 3rd, including the alterations that needed to be made to it by the Motor team. In addition to the presentation to Dr. Furman, the Bogie Integration Team was invited to the SJSU Mechanical Engineering Alumni Event on May 9th. We presented our project as well as introducing Superway to the Alumni and ME faculty. This presentation went very well and attracted a lot of interest. A link to our final report and my LinkedIn account can be found below: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mifsud-nikolas/

The last 2 weeks were spent assembling our drive bogie. Brandon and I spent a little over 40 hours between fitting, filing, boring, and welding the components through the weeks. Due to changing from metric to customary for assembly, there were some tolerance issues which required fixing with filing. The drive bogie turned out very well as shown below. The bogie is currently at Superway to have other teams integrate their systems. There was a slight issue with the alignment of the axle for the motor team. This was caused by shifting or warping of parts during welding and will be resolved by increasing the hole size by milling. Also, after speaking with guideway team, we have decided to shelve route selection for this year. Their third rail would not be ready in time and we would require having parts machined. In addition to preparing for the Senior Project presentations on May 10th, Dr Furman requested that the Bogie Integration attend the SJSU Mechanical Engineering Alumni Event. We ...

This week consisted mostly of finishing up other teams' presentations. This was due to cutting our time short to move the full and half scale tracks from campus to the new Superway location. Other than that, the water jet cutter was fortunately fixed this week and our sheet metal was cut. This means only cutting the tubing and welding the project together remains for our production. This puts our plans slightly behind schedule but should be entirely manageable.

This week, we gave our presentation 2 for the Spring semester. This presentation served mostly as an update to our design changes. We were intending to have started production of our parts by the time of the presentation. This did not happen do to a breakdown of the water jet cutter at Makers' Space. As of the time of writing, the water jet cutter will be repaired by 4/16/2019. This will allow us to cut our parts with only a slight delay to our original plans. The presentation is embedded below. Most of the changes made to the designs were either refining for maneuverability (resizing holes to inches rather than metric, for example). Other than these, there were some dimensions which had finally been provided to us from other teams to mount their systems to the bogies. As general updates, the motor team has found that their motors can move in reverse, meaning there will be more space on the slave bogie for other teams' components.

This week consisted mostly of playing the waiting game. Our designs are finished and now include the sizing of the last components we needed from other teams. Myself and my teammate, Brandon Tarter, will be going to SJSU Makers' Space on Tuesday April 9th to get trained and cleared to use the waterjet and make our parts. Hopefully, we will be able to make our cuts on the same day. It was recently discovered that the motors purchased by the Motor Team are unidirectional, meaning the current design for Maker Faire will not be able to operate and return to it's starting position autonomously. To rectify this, Motor Team, with our help, will be reinstalling the old motor to the slave bogie for reverse drive only. This complicates the project for everyone involved, but we feel this the least disruptive way to solve the issue.

Following our presentation, there were a few issues that needed to be addressed. The drawings needed small alterations based on the materials we will be using. Spacing was changed slightly due to the sheet metal being in customary units rather than the metric we designed for (0.25 in vs 3 mm). Another change was moving the lower passive wheels down slightly as to accommodate the change in track sizing. With these changes, the designs are ready for other teams to incorporate their parts into the bogey. The files have been available for the last few weeks but now the track CAD is complete as well and ready for assembly.

After producing our shop drawings for the sheet metal components of the drive bogie, we were notified by the motor team that there was a clearance issue with the new track width. The in-hub motors would be overhanging by about 5 mm on each side. To rectify this, I have been planning out an adjustment to our CAD models to remove 10-12 mm of width on the drive bogie. Due to this being only a slight adjustment that doesn't affect all of our components, we are still moving forward on sourcing materials and preparing for production. We will be utilizing the central shop of the engineering department as well as the Makers' Space for fabrication. Below is one of the shop drawing that remains unchanged by our adjustments:

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.

This week was intended to do FEA on the drive bogie and work towards the finishing the modifications to the slave bogie. WE ran into some issues getting the model into ANSYS so the FEA we hoped for was not completed. We will keep working on this to get this important data. This week was mostly spent working with other teams on integrating their systems into the bogies. The Motor Team provided us with final sizing specs, allowing us to correct the mockup model we were using in our CAD assemblies. We also ironed out the spacing for the wheels relative to the tracks. Additionally, we are working on placing the route selection for Guideway Team. Finally, we have decided to use a simple pin system to link the two bogies. This will allow the motion we require for Maker Faire while giving the option of a linkage with more degrees of freedom when needed.

This week, I headed the redesign of the drive bogie. It was a huge relief that Wayside Power confirmed that they could power the two wheel drive system. That allowed me to simplify the designs and throw out the concepts I have for articulation of the wheels for turning. I took cues from Futran on their lower clamping wheel system, designing a rigid set of wheels that do not actively hug the bottom of the rail. These wheels aid in keeping the bogie on the tracks and prevent the drive wheels from losing traction with the rails. Additionally, the two sets of wheels are offset to prevent twisting on the rails. The passive wheel assembly This should mark the end of design for the drive bogie. From here, I will send off the CAD to my teammates for a full set of FEA tests. From there, I will alter the design as needed. I am confident in the design and feel that it may only require a few supports to be ready to build. Drive Bogie V4

This week, we gave presentation #2 as an update on our project progress. Now that we have fully committed to a 2 bogie system, the design work has really picked up the pace. The drive bogie is through its preliminary stages and is ready for some finishing work before being sent off for FEA analysis. As CAD lead, I have taken on most of the design work for the drive bogie as it is being built from scratch. The goal was and continues to be looking towards the half-scale bogie as inspiration. The design used for the half-scale bogie is simplistic while having the potential to bear a large load. Due to our design relegating the majority of the load to the slave bogie, the drive bogie can be made of cheaper materials and have the design simplified even more. The slave bogie modifications are being taken on by my group members. The design will be based on the currently built bogie in the Superway warehouse. That bogie was created with the intention of bearing the load as well as providing ...

This week, we began preparing for Presentation 2 which is scheduled for October 24th, 2018. This presentation is a chance for us to show how much progress we have made since Presentation 1. The major differences over presentation 1 for our group is a much clearer vision for our project. Prior to presentation 1, we were very recently introduced to the concept of a 2 bogie system. We knew almost instantly that this system would work better for the ideas we wished to implement. As Presentation 2 approaches, I can confidently say we are in a much more solid place with the project. We have a good understanding of Superway and the systems relevant to our project. In addition, we have a solid concept for our new drive bogie. The CAD for the initial version is nearly complete. From there, FEA will be performed and the model will be tweaked and prepared for prototyping.

This week was spent refining the drive bogie design to a more concrete idea. This version still requires a set of lower clamping wheels but represents a our vision for the drive bogie.  The Drive bogie is meant to be a small bogie with the sole purpose of propulsion. This bogie will be very lightweight and will not be load bearing. This bogie will allow the slave bogie to be more simplistic and used to carry more components. The next step for the coming weeks is to finish the drive bogie design and modify bogies from previous years for use as a slave bogie. From there, we will perform FEA to ensure the designs can handle their intended loads. Below is a picture of the current drive bogie iteration without wheels:

With the basic ideas laid out over the last few week, I began CAD modelling our drive bogie. Based closely on the Futran deployment in Africa, the drive bogie will not be load bearing and will serve solely as propulsion. This bogie will use the in-hub wheels supplied by the motor subteam. This bogie will contain all required components to to be fully independent and able to move while attached to a slave bogie or as its own unit.

This week, we gave out first major presentation. This was the first time of the groups outside of Full-Scale heard about our intention to change to the 2-bogie system. As such, there were quite a few questions regarding its advantages and how we planned to implement it. This week forward is where our work really begins. We are currently creating sketches of the bogies before getting a reference CAD model created.

This week brought some major changes to our plans for the project. After talking with Dr. Furman, we decided to follow Futran' s bogie system, consisting of a drive and slave bogie. We feel this is a better solution as it allows for various sizes of pods to run on the Superway with no modifications needed. This also provides more space for the bogie components to be laid out while providing a better grip to the drive bogie’s wheels.

This week, the entire full-scale bogie team met to talk about our plans. Due to our team designing the frame for all other teams to place their components inside of, we decided to take a step back this week and allow the other teams to come up with rough size estimates rather than restrict them to arbitrary size constraints that we pull from our limited knowledge of their systems. The motor team gave us their dimensions and many of the other team have a good idea of what their housings and general dimensions will be. It appears that our modifications to the existing model will mostly entail some resizing.

Our second team meeting consisted of reviewing the CAD from previous years and starting to come up with ideas. Our goal is to create the Bogie-Guideway interface as a framework for other teams to place their designs. As such, we will not be starting the modelling until we have size estimates and more meetings with the Full-Scale team as a whole. We are also working on the Bogie Sled itself. For this we will be tweaking the current design and implementing a suspension system to give the passengers a smooth ride.

During our first meeting, I joined the Full-Scale Bogie team. The team spoke with previous team members about what improvements are to be made and what needs to be created from scratch. We subdivided our team into groups focusing on individual sections of the bogie. I am working on the Bogie and Guideway Interface. We are designing the method of suspension and fit for the bogie. We will be collaborating with the Guideway Team closely  to ensure a successful design with a smooth ride.