Skip to main content

Week 5 (July 3-7)

The wayside power rails for half of the half-scale track have been installed successfully.   Initially, we planned to carve the inner lining of the PVC pipe to make room for the small rectangular copper piece that is used to hold two sections of rail together at each joint.  However, we decided this is too time-consuming and there is an easier way to solve the problem.  Instead of carving the PVC pipe, we simply placed copper piece behind the PVC pipe, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1:  Copper rail connector piece placed behind PVC pipe. (Photo by Andrew Lu)

The front of the joint is shown in Figure 2:  The modified collector shoes have been tested to be able to easily glide across the joint.  There is no more overlapping of copper rails and the screws are flush with the surface of the copper rail.

Figure 2:  Two sections of copper rail joined together. (Photo by Andrew Lu)

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 2 (June 12-16)

Several pairs of current collectors were available for us to use.  The current collectors are mounted on the bogie and used to pick up the electricity from the wayside power rails.  The current wayside power rails are made by hot-gluing and screwing copper rails into cut-open PVC pipes that serve as insulation.  However, this design of the power rails does not create a smooth enough power rail for the current collector to glide along.  The company that manufactured the current collectors, Kyec, also sells insulated copper rails that were made specifically for the Kyec current collectors to easily glide through.  However, due to the expensive cost and the great amount of time it would take for delivery, we decided to figure out a way to fix the existing power rails.  The main reason why the power rails are not smooth enough is because of how the copper rails are connected at the joints. Two copper rails are overlapped and a single screws holds both rails together, as shown in Figure 1.
Post a Comment
Read more