Adhithyan Vaiyapuri's Spartan Superway Blog

This week, David had found an adapter for the motor to connect with the controller, so everything was good on that front. Unfortunately, I had realized my numbers were off when sizing the previous shaft, so I had to go back and adjust. Then, I had noticed that the Bogie's design was too wide for the wheels to be attached and fit to the guideway, so I was in communication with the Bogie team to make sure that the bogie was narrow enough to accommodate the wheels. This week was also spent on getting the presentation together and practicing to ensure that the presentation goes smoothly.

This week I spent some time working on the controls aspect of the motors. We had sourced a motor controller and had given it to the controls team, but the controller didn't have any way to interface with our motor. We had realized our motor only came with a HiGo 9-pin motor connector, and the controller didn't have that. Therefore, I spent most of this week looking for an adapter or something to connect our motor with the controller. 

This week I realized that the axle I designed last semester wasn't in the Superway Archive, so I had to go back and redo it. Fortunately it's a pretty simple design, as it's only meant to connect the wheels to each other and to the rest of the bogie. I had to go back and verify these designs with our guideway and bogie teams to make sure everything was okay. Luckily everything was all good, but the design is simple enough that adjustments can be made

Even though this is the second week of school, this was our first week of actual work. The previous class was spent moving stuff from the old Superway location to the new building. Today marked the first day we had our motors with us in the shop. Because of this, the focus was finalizing our dimensions and making sure everything was okay before we sent our drawings to the central shop. The team and I also came up with our future plans for what needed to be done for us to be ready with a working prototype by Maker's Faire.

For this week my group has decided to draft and 3-D print 2 different concepts for the wheel. David is going to do a wheel that would fit over the whole pre existing motor assembly, and would connect through the flange that is in the middle of the assembly. I am going to do a more theoretical design. Through the pictures and drawings that XOFO sent to us, I believe that I have a pretty good idea of how the preexisting assembly can be taken apart. This housing is going to be fastened using the 6 bolts in the center of the motor. The housing itself also isn't going to be two halves, and is going to be 1 large piece with one thinner plate as backing. While David's method is going to be more foolproof, I think taking the housing apart is worth looking into as it's going to be lighter. Building over the original casing is also going to be more expensive, as it requires more material. 

Over the last weekend Professor Furman had told the team that it would be cheaper and quicker idea to just buy a pre existing wheel, cut out the center, and then mount the motor within that. I decided to do some digging into that idea, but I wasn't able to find wheels that I was satisfied with. Also, I'm unsure of how structurally sound attaching the motors to the center of a preexisting wheel would be. I talked with the team, and we've come up with a new design. Instead of a two halves of the wheel coming together over the motor, we're going to design one part of the wheel as 3/4 of the way across the motor and have a thinner plate on the other side. This would be an easier thing to manufacture, and it would also solve the problem of joining the two sections of the wheel.

This week has been mostly CAD and some research as far as mounting the housing to the motor is going. The plans from the week before hasn't changed, so I've just been working more on designing and coming up with new designs for the motor's housing. A big concern of mine has been designing the case so that it fits tightly to the motor and doesn't slip. To combat this, I've been looking into having a bead lock type system. What it is is a ring placed around the rim of a wheel and then bolted to the wheel. The idea is that it will keep the tire from slipping. I'm hoping that doing something similar, but closer to the shaft will help keep the housing attached to the motor. I might be over thinking it however, and am planning to go over the designs with my team the next meeting, and Professor Furman if I feel like they are ready for manufacturing.