Week 5

I was able to implement the new design on the copper rail that will work better than the previous design. The previous design will result in making a lot of noise and damage to the collector shoes and rails. This new design will have a diagonal cut on the copper, which will make a better fit. There will also be a copper rail behind the connection point that will make the connection more sturdy.

Week 4

This week was dedicated to fixing the rails. The rails are overlapping in a way that will result in the collector shoes getting stuck. The Solidworks image made by Tan Ho in Figure 1 shows an example of how the collector shoes should go. The blue arrow indicates the correct direction for the shoes. Going the opposite way will prevent the shoes from running smoothly. The team before made the rail in the opposite direction. I have to fix the railings. The difficult part is that there are over 70 feet of railing, and that there is glue on the copper railings. Some copper railings are not connect, and it was different lengths. The entire rails have to be changed. This week was to decide how the rails can be changed, and fix half the railings. There might be a new design on the railing, because having the shoes fall onto another copper rail will create noise and damage to the rail. There might be another way to fix the rails stacking.

Figure 1. Correct rail stack by Tan Ho

Week 3

I found many mistakes the previous team had done. I have questions about the batteries and charge controller with the railing designs. The more I work on the wayside, the more errors I found.

The charge controller and batteries might be a problem. The batteries read different voltages on every input and output. One battery have the same outputs that is connected to 2 wires. The outputs read different voltages. One output reads 41V and the other output reads 51V. This can be a problem with the batteries. Maybe the previous team shorted the batteries by touching the positive and negative ends together. The multimeter also had a blown fuse, which means they measured a current too high for the multimeter. This shows that the previous team had many mistakes.


The other problems are in the railings. The design on the railings is not efficient. The PVC pipes on the railings are too large for the collector shoes. This gives space for the collector shoes to slip off the copper railings. My team and I were able to find a solution. Instead of replacing all of the tubings, which can take weeks; we changed the shoes. We added more copper to the shoes to make it wider, which will decrease the chances of slipping shown in Figure 1. More information can be found in the Wayside team blog in my description. The way the previous team set up the railing is also a problem. The bolgie moving right to left. The copper railings are stacked on top of each other, which creates a step on the railings. This will cause the bolgie to get stuck. My team and I will also have to replace all the railings.

Figure 1. New design on collector shoes

Week 2

The second week of Spartan Superway progressed at an incredible rate. Unlike last week where I learned and worked by myself; I have a team this week. There are two new members that joined the wayside. I caught the team up on the progress I made on the first week, and what my plans were on the wayside. The team agreed with me to progress as planned on my week 1 blog. I decide and test the batteries and railing on the half scale track. Testing the solar panels under the sun gave a high voltage. I put two solar panels in series, which gave us a total of 57.34 volts as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Multimeter reading solar panel voltage

Charging the battery was difficult. There is a problem with either the solar panel charge controller or the batteries. Each batteries gave off a different voltage and each outputs and inputs. Our new goal is to fix and get the half scale model running. The FoodTrans representative will present us a different idea of the track later, and it will be implemented into the full scale. Without information on the FoodTran track, I will be working on the half scale to make sure it is running. 

Week 1

The first week of the Spartan Superway internship was exciting and interesting. My part of the internship deals with Half-Scaled Wayside. I have never dealt with power or wayside in previous experience, which makes this project challenging and exciting. On the first week, I tried to learn as much as I can about wayside. I also reviewed previous work on how the wayside was done in the past years. There are still equipments and experiment tests that I do not understand. I will need to keep doing research on how the equipment operates, and how the tests are conducted.

I have discovered that the wayside is similar to the wire on a bus that is connected to the wires as shown in Figure 1. The wayside is a way to conduct electricity, so basically it is a long wire that transfers current.

Figure 1. Train using wayside

https://www.google.com/search?q=wayside+electricity&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_6pv-gKDUAhUE44MKHaZ2BloQ_AUIDCgD&biw=790&bih=750#imgrc=QOqaYNfxTdhBoM:

I was able to ask previous members and Eric to get a better understanding of my part in the wayside. I am in charge of transferring the solar panel energy to charge the capacitors (batteries). The capacitors should generate a 48V DC on the top rail, which will transfer into the motor's controller at 110V AC. There are many steps and understanding in between in order to get this task to work properly. I have a general understanding of how the project should be done by the end of the first week.

I have so far concluded several ways in getting the wayside to work properly.

Step 1: Use a solar panel charge controller to get the energy from solar panel to batteries

Step 2: The batteries will output 3V, which need to somehow be converted to 48V to be connected to the railing

Step 3: Find a way to connect the batteries to the railing

Step 4: Redesign the collector shoes to fit railing better

Step 5: Use a 48V DC to 110V AC inverter to tranfer the collector shoes voltage into the motor's controller

These are the general idea on how to make the wayside work properly.