A Curious Mechanical Engineering Student

In this week, I worked with Joey on the half scale team getting a test rig to work. Our test rig was the basic overall mechatronics side of things. This included a stepper motor for the steering, and two DC motors for the propulsion. We also got some parts machined for the half scale bogie. Roger, the technician at the ENGR 123 machine shop helped machine some spacers and jackets for the steering shaft. The modified steering shaft and the modified gear were sent to the Central Shop, but the return time around 2+ weeks from the beginning of this week, so assembly of the bogie is going to take a significantly longer amount of time than expected.

This week we recieved our McMaster order for parts to fix the half-scale bogie. This included new sets of fasteners, rods for the steering shaft and for spacers, and other miscellaneous components. Since access to machines to make our components is very limited, we have to ask the shop technicians to get our parts made for us. A couple things we are now working on are getting the parts back to re-assemble the bogie and look into the braking and regenerative braking system.

In this intro week, my team and myself were thrust into the previous bogie design from the 2016 - 2017 year. After a brief introduction of what we are to work on, there were somethings that went wrong with the previous year's bogie that needed to be fixed, which includes the bent steering rod at the top of the priority list. Figure 1 Twisted Steering shaft Even though we have taken the majority of the bogie apart the steering shaft remains lodged in the bogie due to several defined constraints that can't be removed. Figure 2 Constrained gearbox The gearbox is held in by a welded plate and press fitted bearings which prevent the gearbox from moving about, but thus creates it extremely difficult to remove.