Week 08/01 - 08/05

This is our final output of suspension design.

Figure 1. Overall picture

The top part will be connected with roller part of bogie. To enhance strength, we set triangular mechanism and stiffner. Entire mechanism was devided by 2 part from middle circular tube as you can see in the figure. 2 actuators on the both side of the figure is to control pose of the cabin. 2 suspensions in the middle are connected with universal pin as you can see in the figure. Due to the shape of the suspension we ordered, we made connecting plate as you can see in the center of the figure. All of these mechanisms should be attached with U-tube located bottom of the figure. For future work, some steel frame work on ceiling inside cabin will be required to connect with cabin and U-tube should be drilled to put bolt.

Figure 2. Suspension part

 



Week 07/18 - 07/22

Hi, There

Our final assembly is showed below,

2 suspensions as you can see in the middle of the picture have role in control the vertical swinging.

2 actuators as you can see in the both side of the picture have role in level position of the pod car.

3 connecting pins contacted on circular tube in the middle can rotate freely as the pod car moves.

Though this, we achieved our gole of controling vertical, horizontal swinging movement or vibration.




However, some issues came out.

brackets connecting the cabin and suspension can be broke because of loading from swinging (same direction with the pod car's going ahead)

So, we changed the shape of the brackets(I'll attach the picture soon)

And, there is an issue that high loading will be applied on the toppest mechanism, we'll discuss how can we solve the problem.

And, in order to make possible to manufacturing, especially welding process, we changed the middle mechanism connected with the toppest bar. it'll have rectangular shape. I'll posted soon.

I heard that it'll cost $700 for materials and manufacture.

Week 07/11 - 07/15

Right after the presentation on last Friday, we found our first plan isn't good model beacause of malfunction for control pose of pod car. so we changed our direction of developing suspension.

In large frame, we set the direction listed below:

1. Use current existing active suspension previous team made.
2. but change the mechanism of lower part (from the middle bar connected with actuators to bottom)

 

 

 



 

 



And this is one of our assembly on testing. 3 actuators assembled with newly designed middle bar. middle bar can be modified to plane shape or other shape. we are now finding which shape is best for endure big loading(torsion and so on).

This afternoon, we are thinking of another mechanism of the top structure(showed on upper picture) because it isn't fit well on current half scale track we guess.


And, we just started to modify small scale track because the small scale bogie has problems on going through the track due to bad fabrication/design/assemble I guess. but It can be easily solved by bend the corner track by hand or re-assemble the track or other way.

To summarize about small scale, we just started to try to modify the track in order for bogie to go well on track, no stuck! and to realize our safety wings we designed before.

Week 07/04 ~ 07/08

1.     Subjects

A.     Small Scale modeling and Manufacturing

B.      Suspensions of Half Scale

2.     Goals

A.     Make more stable system (Stability and Torque balance)

                         i.         How to make the bogie

B.      Prevent vibration when moving follow the inclined track and corner

                         i.         Vertical / Horizontal

1.      Using 5 suspension is composed of Spring and Damper

2.      Making independent system for bogie and cabin

-       The reason why we make this independent sys is that suspension between bogie and cabin can prevent vibration from moving.

-       Difference between Using only two suspensions with dependent sys and applying independent sys.

n  Vibration can’t be delivered to the cabin directly because of two parts of suspension sys.

n  However, using one suspension part can’t avoid the connection between bogie and cabin. So vibration couldn’t effectively be reduced.

-       In these reason we choose two independent suspension system. It would be helpful to control the pose of cabin. 

3.     1^st week development progress situation.

A.     Making each drawing and 3D modeling of small scale.

2^nd week (the other team arrived )

B.      Improving 3D modeling of the small scale

 

4.     Problems

A.     For small scale

                         i.         We need to divide track into three pieces.

                        ii.         Can’t find the parts to fit for small scale.

 

B.      For half scale

                         i.         For maintaining posture of cabin we need to apply active suspension.




=======================================================================
We found our newly designed work has some error... we thought using current system is more time-efficient way.

so we gonna change our direction of work and we decided to use the current active suspension system.

but we will work on improve the lower part of the system: vertical directional suspension.

It includes two mountain bike suspension

we gonna change the mechanism of that to complement some disadvantages current active system has.

Details of our new work will be posted next week.

Week 06/27 ~ 07/01

Each Part’s explanation.

<Total Model>

Our vision of individual part is explained below.

Before explanation:

Two important revision factors from original model.

Reduction friction of total model and improve stability for operation.

l  2^nd week plan

-       Setting details for measures such as hole size and length of each parts.

-       Regulating position for matching center of mass by moving some parts.

-       Analyze stress for main parts.

-       Buying parts and making Cabin with 3D printer.

-       Considering the half-scale model, how to improve track and apply the sys.

l  Another works

-       How to make passive/active suspension sys.

-       Improve the small scale track to apply new track model.

-       The main problem is how to apply new track without interference in the electronic device and lines.

<Upside Part>

 

There is an issue due to the distance of top rail and top bearing. If the switching mechanism doesn’t work properly, the bogie and passengers can fall off the guideway. So we shortened the distance between two rod of moving up and down parts by 3mm. Through this work, it’ll decrease the possibility of falling down.

<Mid Part>

                                                       

Due to the decrease of distance of upside part, Mid-part had to shorten its width correspondently.

<Side plane>

Side plane is dependent part of all other parts so its locations of many holes should be figured out by understanding about connection and assembling manner with other parts.

<Moving Arm>

We added a kind of bracket so that we can modify the force transfer system. Briefly speaking, we replace the piano wire with a rigid link/bar. It can improve the force transfer mechanism more stable. Its width was designed to 2mm and the length will be set according to the distance between the motor and connecting point on upper bar of small scale bogie.

<Safety Bar>

As I mentioned above, there is a possibility of fall. So we added a safety mechanism. It’s like trusses. Weight lightening is considered and we made its shape as a truss. We attached this wing shaped part on each side plane. To use this safety bars, we will cut out the correspond region of the lower part of the track(maybe bottom part).

<H shape Bar with vertical Pole>

This is an important part of our work. We decided to make a suspension system under the cabin. We make the mechanism as followed:

1^st floor: cut-upper triangular pyramid support.

2^nd floor: vertical rod(and its top is connected with H-shaped bar) and 3 suspension equipment.

Current location of force transfer line is far from center of moving T-bars and side planes. So it causes unnecessary bending moment. So we relocate motor’s position(exactly, location of revolving vane’s center point connected with motor). We didn’t change the location of hole related with bar which was supporting, fastening the motor but we changed the manner of fastening the motor onto bar as showed on the figure. The long bar piercing through the cabin should be placed center of our upper bogie system and if it is able to be placed at the center of the cabin at the same time, it’ll be better.

<Motor part>

One issue occurred in motor part and not mentioned above is piano wire (we can find the wire in the small bogie already made). It hasn’t enough strength to transfer the force coming from motor and causes unpredictable motion when the bogie is moving on the track. So we replace it with rigid bars to get reliability. Its dimension should be fixed by considering other location of other parts.