Skip to main content

Week 4 (June 26-30)

The process of renovating the rails continued into the beginning of this week.  However, plans had to be change.  Keeping the original design of overlapping the rails would save time, but it is not the best solution to the problem.  Overlapping copper rails according to the direction of the movement of the collector shoes would still be too rough for the collector shoes to glide through each joint.  Having the collector shoes glide from a higher copper rail to a lower rail meant that the collector shoe would have to face an abrupt drop at each joint.  This unnecessarily enhances the wear and tear on the copper collector shoe and the wayside power rails.  A new design for the wayside power rails is to make a diagonal cut at each end of the copper rails and also drill one hold at each end for screws.  A model of the new design is shown in Figure 1.  The ends of two sections of copper rail would fit together like a puzzle piece.  The purpose of the diagonal cut is to decrease the amount of gap that the collector shoe has to come in contact with at any given moment when it glides through a joint.  There will be no more overlapping of the rails.  A small rectangular piece of copper is placed under the joint to connect the rails together and ensure electricity can flow through.  The PVC pipe will be carved to prevent the rectagular copper piece from creating a bump on the face of the copper rail.


Figure 1:  Improved rail design. (Drawn by Tan Ho)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 8 (July 24-28)

The design for the collector shoe guides had been changed slightly.  The outer lip, or wall, on the guide is not needed.  We realized that the collector shoes do not hang lower than the guide.  In addition,  the curves on the guide that push the collector shoes into position are difficult to create.  Instead, extra wheels that the bogie team no longer needed were used in place of the curves.  We also spent this week writing the majority of the final report.
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 9 (July 31 - August 4)

One of the collector shoe guides have been built and installed to an end of the track.  The installed collector shoe guide is shown in Figure 1.  The collector shoes slide between the wheels and into the wayside power rails.  Wires connecting to the battery have also been installed to the rails.  Wires from the previous Wayside Power Team are reused.  The ends of the wires are repaired where needed and zip ties are used to keep the wires organized on the track.  A multimeter is placed at the other end of the rails to ensure that the transfer of electricity through the wayside power rails is successful.  We have also finished the final report this week. Figure 1:  Installed collector shoe guide. (Photo by Kevin Leong) Figure 2:  Fixing and organizing wires. (Photo by Kevin Leong)
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 7 (July 17-21)

By the end of this week, all of the wayside power rails have been installed for the half-scale track.  Guides for the collector shoes need to be installed at the ends of the wayside power rails.  The purpose of a guide to gently feed a freely dangling pair of collector shoes back into a pair of wayside power rails.  This occurs during a track change, in which a pair of collector shoes derails from the wayside power rails on one side of the track.  Another pair of collector shoes needs to be guided back into the wayside power rails on the other track.  We brainstormed ideas for how the collector shoe guides should be made.  Tan was able for draw out a model of the guide using SolidWorks, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1:  Model of a collector shoe guide. (Drawn by Tan Ho)
Post a Comment
Read more