Friday, June 16, 2017

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

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Week 8

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