Work Summary 9/14-9/20

Last week, I helped get the track get ready for the 43rd Annual Silicon Valley Electric Vehicle Show along with Kenny Strickland, Kenneth Aganon, Marc Acoba, David Chen, Thomas Nguyen, and Michael Hurst. I went to the meeting that was held on Friday where we talked about the future of the project, with a gentleman named Bill James, and also disassembled the track for the first time. I thought that the track was going to be hard to disassemble but we had enough people to get it apart in a matter of minutes. We then packed the track into Kenny Strickland's car and fit all the pods and tools into my car. Then I went to the event at De Anza College the next morning where we all assembled the track and ran the pods.

Doing this event made me open my eyes to improvements that need to be made to the track/pod. The track needs to be made out less pieces and needs a better supporting system because the rods are hard to make the track level. The pod needs the most improvement. The main switching mechanism needs to be more sturdy. The piano wire that connects the servo to the guideways is not ideal and makes the pod fall off the track sometimes. Another thing is that some of the screws within the pod get loose but there is no way to get a tool in there to tighten them without disassembling the entire pod. We also need to cover all the circuit boards in a protective case as well. The biggest thing we found out is the lack of a fail safe is really bad. The pod fell off the track multiple times during the event which is not good. The event was really cool. We met a lot of people that were interested in what we are doing and even won an award for best Student Project.