Jaspreet Singh

This week we delivered our final presentation on the Spartan Superway project. The end result was amazing and E-Brake worked better than I had expected. The alumni event was a great experience as I demonstrated my project to many people. Overall the Spartan Superway project has been a great experience and I have learned so much. I hope the coming years' team will continue to work hard to hopefully bring this project into reality. Jaspreet Singh

This week I was able to completely finish my system. I was able to mount it on a platform and start to test it. I am very happy to say that I am finished testing my design and it performs exactly as I had expected to. I probably will not be able to test it on the track since it is not ready, but I am confident that it will perform to its specifications. Additionally, I made a slider mechanism which allows adjustment of the braking system. As of now, the braking system is ready to mount on the slave bogie.

This week I was able to get all of my parts welded from Huffman's Welding in Newark, CA. The parts came out excellent and the next step is to be to assemble everything and begin testing of the system. The picture below shows the welded parts.

The emergency braking is almost ready for testing. The manufacturing is almost complete with an exception of the welding work. The parts have been sent out for welding and I will get them back on April 29th. After the parts are put together, I would like to start testing to ensure that everything is in working order.

This week I was able to make good progress on the braking system. I spent about 20 hours in the machine shop making my design. Unfortunately, I made a mistake on two parts so I had to start over. Parts finished are shown and listed below. I am currently prepping to have my design welded as well. -8 side pieces. -2 Mounting brackets -2 Bottom sliders -1 Top slider -1 Shaft -1 Top slider -1 Electromagnet holder Needed: -1 Top slider -1 Shaft -1 Electromagnet holder -Welding

This week the team prepared for and delivered our second presentation. I was able to get full access to the mill and lathe in the maker space. Additionally, I was able to get access to E123 shop. This will greatly accelerate the production of my design as I am manufacturing myself. I did not make any progress this week in production since I did not have full access to the lathe in the mill until Wednesday April 10. I was able to purchase the hardware needed for my design. Next week I hope to make good progress in production.

This week during spring break, I went to the makerspace area to start fabrication on my design. I had a slow start but I feel confident that I will be able to make my parts. I started to machine the bottom slider and top piece of my design using as lath and mill. I look forward to going to maker-space this whole week but I have limited access because there always need to be someone supervising.

This week I was able to finalize my design and make engineering drawings. Engineering drawings are complete for all the parts of the design. I will be taking these drawings to the makerspace area where the lathe and mill is located. I will be using the drawings to make my parts.

This week I started to make some engineering drawings for the braking system. I will be using the  drawings to machine the design using a lath and mill. The design will most likely be be fabricated in Makerspace located on campus. I will be getting help from some individuals to machine the design, as it has been a while since I last used machining tools.  Furthermore, I also worked on the essay that was due this week.

I was able to source most of my needed material this week. I stopped by at Campbell Metals in San Jose and picked up 6061 aluminum that will be needed for my design. I purchased 2 5/8" x 1 ft aluminum round rod for the top base and bottom base pieces. 7/8" x 2ft round rod was purchased for the moving rod inside the braking system, as well as the compression system. 1.5" x 2 ft rectangular stock was purchased for the brackets and electromagnet mounting pieces. I plan to start to machine my design late March as i have several midterms coming up next week.

I was able to finalize my design this week and plan to start machining at makerspace very shortly. Additionally, I received my springs and brake material this week from Mcmaster Carr. I will be purchasing my aluminum stock from Campbell Metals today. By Friday 03/08/2019, I will have 90% of my parts for my design. The other 10% are misc hardware that can be purchased from Homedepot and Dale Hardware. I plan to have my design built by late March/ Early April.

This week, I was able to completely redesign my braking system. I made some small changes which will help during the manufacturing stage. All the fabrication, manufacturing, and assembly will be done my myself. I am currently in contact with the central shop with several questions about equipment. As soon as I hear back from them, I will purchase all my metal stock needed. I plan to finish manufacturing my design by the end of March.

The braking system is undergoing some minor changes in the design to ease in manufacturability. The Braking system will be made from aluminum instead of steel in the original design. Since the bogie will be traveling only 2mph at maker faire, a smaller force will be needed to stop it. The new stopping distance is 2 feet. Currently, the 130 lb magnet has been purchased from Amazon. All other components except the spring will be machined by myself.

Our last presentation was given in this week. I also had a chance to speak with Dan and Ethan about my emergency braking design. Overall, Dan and Ethan seemed to have liked the Design. One thing Dan told me was that the brake material may shear off the metal pad backing upon deployment. This is something that needs to be tested and would be extremely difficult to calculate. Furthermore, the team is working on the final report as well. We saved all of our pictures throughout the semester so it should be easy to implement in the report.

In this week, I prepared for my part of the presentation. I was able to perform FEA on several parts in my assembly. My goal was to have a factor of safety of at least 2. Furthermore, we started to work on the project report and we are planning to finish it soon. I am looking to start my bill of material to insert into the final report as well.The pictures below are FEA of several parts of the assembly.

For this week, I was able to fully redesign the braking system. There were several issues from the last design such as twisting of the inside rod during braking and the ability to compress the spring back after system is deployed. The redesign fixes all of these issues. The rods that are protruding from the sides of the design are mounting spots for a spring compressor. There is also a notch in the bottom section of the rod with a pin inside the assembly. This will not allow the rod to rotate during deployment. FEA has been ran on the entire system and has a minimum factor of safety of 2.

I have been focusing on my portion of the final report for this week. I have also designed and performed FEA on my lower armature assembly. I had to design a bracket because the previous weeks designed failed during FEA. I am currently remodeling my design to include a way to compress the spring and to prevent the rod from turning inside of slider assembly. Below is an FEA result for my bracket and armature assembly. I got a FOS of 1.7.

Emergency Brakes: For this week, I ran FEA on the armature assembly to make sure that It can withstand forces that that will be present. A force of 1500lbf was applied to the bottom of the armature which simulates the pulling force of the electromagnet. The minimum factor is 2.8 which is acceptable. Furthermore, the Von-Mises effective stress is below the yield strength of the material which is also good. I will continue to run FEA on other parts as well.

Emergency Braking System Improvements There were several problems that were solved this week regarding the emergency braking system. The problems included: Compressing 1500 lbf spring after the brakes are deployed.  Alignment issues with electromagnet Maintainability (inspection)  Main rod is able to rotate A simple solution was found to compress the spring after it has been deployed. Auto mechanics use a tool called a spring compressor which is able to compress springs to change dampers. This tool is show below in Figure 1. This tool is extremely strong and will be able to compress the spring that has been selected for our system. The system will need some simple modifications to accommodate the spring compressor.  Figure 1.  The spring compressors feature a long threaded bolt which will compress the springs when rotated with a 19mm socket. The top and bottom U shaped pieces will attach to the assembly to compress the spring.  The electr...

Rapid Prototyping is completed at 1/3 scale.  Main system in CAD is completed, but will need modification due to some issues Bracket for electromagnet needs to be made Issues: Need a way to compress spring after the system is deployed. After inspecting the prototype, I learned that the rod inside the slider assembly may rotate during brake deployment.  FEA still needs to be worked on after a solid design is made. The updated model needs to fix the issues listed above.  Need to decide which material to use. Aluminum will definitely work for Maker Fair, but not sure it will work for the actual design.  Spring and electromagnet has been chosen, which can be seen in our last weeks posting.