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Showing posts from November, 2018

Weekly Update

This week, Francisco, Patrick, and I approached Dr. Furman with questions to figure out where we should direct ourselves the week before Thanksgiving. Letting us know some good information, like trying multiple solutions for the canopy instead of 1, getting in contact with a couple of companies to understand what we're working with, and being aware of many different ideas and questions we weren't asking ourselves definitely helped. Along with this, the team seems to be finally getting out of our rough phase with being out of sync, tasks not being completed, and general mis-communication, which will greatly improve our progress in the coming weeks. Reflecting on this week, I think we should have more sources for ideas instead of one, because if the one idea doesn't work as well as intended, then we're in trouble. 11/12-11/16 - Jordan Schultz

Weekly Update

This week, Francisco, Patrick, and I focused on new ways to keep the momentum of our project going. We are currently transitioning from our designing to FEA and small scale testing to get a better understanding of mounting our solar panel frame onto the guide way and attaching the panels to our frame. I am planning to incorporate the FEA portion into my ME 160 project so that I can develop a better answer for the analysis, while having more heads to discuss improvements to the design. The small scale is still in progress, and I am just waiting for some 3d printing parts to be provided by Brandon Tartar. In the realm of team dynamics, all 3 of us in the team have taken a group dynamic quiz provided in ME 180 to figure out our team strengths and how to work with those strengths. With this in mind we are planning to continue working hard into Thanksgiving break and beyond. My reflections for  this week boil down to work past the disagreements and stalemates in the group to get some i...

Weekly Update

This week, Francisco, Patrick, and I were continuing our design specifications in collaboration with the guideway team and the wayside team, along with coming from a meeting with Mr. Swenson and Dr. Furman. The ideas we got from our meeting is pushing us to get into contact with SolarCity to inquire about their current designs and see if there are any opportunities to get sponsorship from them for this project. In the meantime, we are working diligently to get our assembly done this next week so that the guideway team can make suggestions to us, while we can continue to do FEA analysis on the structure design we have chosen. From this, we can evaluate and decide if some portions of the frame need to be strengthened. We will also be be incorporating small scale models of our design in the next couple of weeks, with assistance from Brandon Tartar of the Full-Scale Bogie team. Reflecting on this past week, I think the team is handling the increase of work rather well, and by the end of th...