Blog update for week 7/18-7/22

During the last week, I worked mostly on preparing the fabrication and the fabrication of the bogie. I grinned down more welds on scrap metal to get the metal pieces ready to give to the machinist. I tried drilling and tapping a few holes in these metal pieces, but due to the equipment this wasn't as precise as we hoped for. This is why we decided to get all the fabrication of the metal pieces for the machinist to do, besides supplying him with the metal. The time I didn't spend on the fabrication of the bogie this week was spent on writing the final report for the bogie team. I reviewed all of our presentations and notes to decide what to include and what not to include in the final report. I found or captured pictures to help describe what I would include in the report.

Week of 7/11 - 7/15

On Monday, I made a few finishing touches for the conference poster. I also worked with Neto on the presentation that we gave at the conference. On Tuesday, I attended the conference and gave my presentation with Neto. I worked solely on the fabrication of the bogie for the remanding of the week. I was able to find some scrapped 1" by 1" tubes of steel that we needed, but they were welded onto other pieces of steel. So, I used a grinder to grind off the welds, and then used a butcher saw to cut the remanding welds that I couldn't get to with the grinder. I then filed down any sharp points on the metal tub and any metal that was hanging off. Neto and I began drilling holes into the tubes, but to get more precise holes we decided to plan on doing the drilling at the lab on campus,

ASES solar conference

While attending the the ASES solar conference yesterday(7-13-16), I learned a lot about solar panels in general, but especially about mounting systems. I enjoyed attending the conference as a whole The main three companies that I talked with were Baja Construction CO. INC., Alion Energy, and Japan Solar. The company I found most interesting and most beneficial for our project was Alion Energy because they have a robot that is programmed not only to help with the installation process, but also to clean the solar panels routinely. This idea would be ideal to implement on our project to reduce manual labor costs on both installation and cleaning. After networking with companies, I and a few individuals had to give our presentations. I believe everyone did a superb job on our presentations.

Weekly blog for 7/4-7/8

This week I worked mostly on the design of the bogie and especially the propulsion system. I brainstormed with my group members to figure out, which propulsion system to use on our final bogie. I designed a propulsion system on Solidworks and analyzed it with Victor's design of a propulsion system. After we brainstormed about each others designs, we put the completed design onto our bogie. Neto and I also began the fabrication process of the bogie.

Week of 6/27-7/1

During this week, I began to go more into depth involving the brainstorming of the propulsion system. I work with Victor and Pedro to decide which mechanism would be more efficient. After we ruled out a few different mechanism, we decided to pick 2 that we would stick with and design. I worked with Pedro in designing these propulsion systems on SolidWorks. I also helped Neto brainstorm on how to solve different issues involving our design and implementing the steering arms into the design.