Week 9: 10/17 - 10/24

This week:

-> Got together as a team to work on presentation

-> Also meet up with other teams to make sure that all information is up-to-date and the same.

-> We are currently in contact with XOFO motors about a recommended motor, since MAC Motor has been unresponsive.

-> Ran kinematic simulations on the motor XOFO recommended.

-> Calculated outputs of our motor to make sure we have enough output to move bogie

Since we have decided to go with another motor:

-> Drew preliminary CAD drawings our shaft

-> Ran FEA on our designed shaft

-> Got an invoice for 6 motors without controller

-> Updated Gnatt chart: motors are currently delayed but on schedule for everything else.

-> Spoke with Dr. Furman about reducing the number of motors needed in order to save money

Next Week:

-> Continue CAD design of shaft and motor casing

-> Keep in contact with XOFO, MAC Motor, QS, and TDCM about motor

-> Purchase Motors (4)

Comments

  1. Eric HagstromOctober 30, 2018 at 12:34 PM

    Full Scale Motor Team,

    I am always worried about a team spending $2500 on motors and controllers when 90% of the time they end up making a mistake on calculations and end up not being used. You all need to review your calculations with Dr. Furman and Ron to ensure the will meet your specification and design goals for the rest of the full scale teams.

    I would like to see more engineering CAD / analysis work. Considering you have 4 members on your team, and only research and a CAD drive shaft have been completed, you are behind. Please work harder in designing / analyzing anything you can without the motors and controllers. How can you help the other full scale teams (especially full scale bogie integration team who needs to design a master and slave bogie)?

    Lots of work to successfully integrate all full scale sub-systems together in the end. So please work hard to achieve your end goals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kevin XieOctober 31, 2018 at 3:09 PM

    Hello Eric,

    We understand your worries about our team spending $2500 on motors and controllers. We have spoke with Dr. Furman to reduce down to 2 motors for the drive bogie. We are now planning on purchasing 4 motors instead of 6. This will bring the motor price down from $1387 to $921.40. As for controller, we are still looking for a suitable controller for our ultracapacitors.

    After talking to Dr. Furman, Wayside team, and running our own numbers, the motor recommended by XOFO will be enough to move the whole system. We are purchasing 2 extra motors, as requested by Dr. Furman, in case any motor stop running/working for any reason in the future.

    Yes, we have 4 members on our team, but our project scope does not change. We had to and are still currently doing all this research in order to find the right motor for the bogie system. As you mentioned, you are worried about our team spending an huge amount of money on motor and controllers "when 90% of the time they end up making a mistake on calculations and end up not being used." If we don't do the proper research, we will likely buy a motor that won't work for the project. That will result to a waste of time and money.

    Without the final decision on a motor we will be working with, we cannot proceed further. We do not want to waste time designing/analyzing anything just to scrap it in the end.

    I hope you understand where we are coming from. Just because our team has 4 members, it does not change anything. Our concern is that we are being graded differently, and we hope that is not the case.

    ReplyDelete

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