Adhithyan Vaiyapuri's Spartan Superway Blog

This week we ran into a pretty big problem. Because the motors were from a Chinese company, and the drawings were in Chinese. When we managed to translate, there was a sentence that suggested that the motors turn one way. These are BLDC motors, so there has to be a clutch attached to the gearbox. We need the motor to turn both ways, so we've discussed our options with the other team and decided that adding a third motor on the Slave Bogie would be the best move, to take care of the reverse. This means our team is responsible for fixing the previous years' motor/propulsion system. It should be a pretty easy thing to do, as we have all the materials and parts from that system.

This week was pretty easy. The axle design was finalized and sent off to the central shop, so all the designwork is done. We've been in communication with controls team to see if there was anything we could do for our motor. Other than that, it's been a pretty easy week. 

This week was spent mostly working on making sure the wheels would fit the track. It was a pretty simple fix,

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.