A Curious Mechanical Engineering Student

This week was all about getting the bogie up and running. Joey, Ryan and myself attended a two day training session at the Ansys headquarters to learn about fea and cfd in the ansys fluent software. Due to time constraints, and fea of the suspension and Ryans brake system will be done through solidworks. It will be easier to to and obtaining results would come faster. I was able to fix the second bogie with the parts that finally came from the machinist from San Jose State. There were some problems with the set screws and loctite which set me back a couple of hours, but I was able to get both bogies almost function by the end of thursday. I hope to get both bogies on the track on monday and finally do a test run to see if the modifications to the bogies actually work.

This week was a very busy week for the half scale team. Working together, Joey, Ryan and myself were able to manufacture through rapid prototyping a small test bed system for the tilting mechanism. We were also able to finalize a mock suspension system for the half scale bogie system on Solidworks. This utilized a chain driving mechanism as well as a strut system to act as an anti-roll mechanism. Although this is only on Solidworks, it can be implemented for future teams to use or even improve upon. We then finally got parts from the machinist and have started to partly re-assemble both bogies.

This week was mostly getting a CAD model together of the tilting and anti-roll mechanism. I also had a CAD of the brakes that would be used, but due to the lack of the ability to get brakes, a prototype model is to be created once we get access to bicycle brakes. After coming up with a solid idea for a tilting model, Joey was able to CAD a model of it. I then decided to work on the anti-roll mechanism, which involved finding a strut that would match the dimensions. A CAD model is still in progress and is to be completed by next week. I then looked at ideas to have a small test bed for tilting, and that involved 3D printing small miter gears and have a small test bed with a gyroscope to demonstrate the tilting mechanism. The CAD would represent what our system would look like if implemented on the half-scale system. The parts to fix the bogie are to stated to be finished by next week, depending on how fast the machinist works.