High Density Power Motor Team

This week was spent trying to fix our previous mistake. We had a shaft machined, but upon trying to fit it into the motor we realized the shaft was tapped at a larger diameter. Therefore, we needed We tried a few local metal shops to buy stock but unfortunately we were unable to find anything. We eventually bought some more aluminum online and gave it to the manufacturer. We have yet to measure the diameter of the holes in the bogie, so the shaft diameter is still 1 inch with a tolerance of .035 inch. If the shaft doesn't fit, it can be turned down further on a lathe. We are also talking to the controls team about analyzing the regenerative braking. The controller's data sheet makes it sound like the regen braking happens automatically with no need to wire any special circuits, so we need to test that with the controls team. 

This week the motor team worked on updating our presentation due to not being able to present the previous week. We helped guideway team move the track into our new superway location. We also ordered and delivered the second motor controller and relay contacts to controls team. We worked together and was able to get the motor up and running. We had a previous issue of believing that the motor was unidirectional. But after testing, the motor is able to move forward and backward. We have completely scrapped the idea of a third motor since we no longer have any use for it. We were able to have central shop manufacture our motor shaft first for us to do further test what we will be implementing on the drive bogie. However, the tap was made too big. The CAD drawings XOFO provided had false information and we did not double check that before manufacturing. We have to reorder another stock material for retapping. This time, we had the technician at central shop measure the size from our motor...

Week 9 was about working on the motor itself and getting ready for the presentation of 04/10. Since there were a lot of things that the team has to finish, such as getting possible solutions to the unidirectional motor problem, the team decided to meet up together to work on the presentation, and also discuss how to solve the issue that we are dealing with. As our primary solution is to weld the clutch of the motor, the team decided to open up the motor ourselves to see the clutch ourselves. Due to us not having the proper equipments to open the motor, the team met at Central Shop to borrow their materials to manually open up the motor. Once opened, we tried to manually turn the motor in both directions. Surprisingly, the motor does engage in both directions. This means that the motor can move forward and backward. We were not sure how this can happens, therefore David sent an email to XOFO to confirm whether or not the motor can turn both directions. If XOFO confirms this, our problem...

Week 8 was the spring break. During spring break, we continued working on our issue that we found during week 7, which is the motor turned out to be unidirectional. There are several possibilities that the team found during researching, welding the clutch of the motor, or using a third motor. The team came into the conclusion that welding the clutch would be the best solution. Hence, our back-up plans would be using the third motor that Superway had, but this will be very troublesome because our team had to program the control system ourselves. Aside from that, there will be an increase in the bill of materials if we decide to go for the third motor, mainly because we have to buy another timing belt that can stand the power of the third motor so that the belt will not break.