Post #6: Roundabout Construction Progress

During the work period of March 6 - March 26, we have successfully delivered almost every single part necessary to build our power generating roundabout to the machinist, and have almost finished construction of the prototype alongside him. Figures 1 through 3 below show different perspectives of what has been assembled so far.

Figure 1: Top view of the roundabout.

Figure 2: Side view of the roundabout.

Figure 3: Bottom view of the roundabout.

In figure 1, you can see that the aluminum elbows and handrails have been welded together and screwed down to the rotating base. The light colored spots is dried wood filler which was used to fill in the holes that came with the wooden round. Figure 2 shows a side view of the prototype, which is only the top half in its current state since we cannot pin the stationary base on until we attach the sprockets. Figure 3 shows a bottom view of the roundabout. There is a hole in the center for a bolt to go through and pin the large sprocket to the underside of the base. The turntable's inner ring is screwed to the platform while the outer ring is screwed to the wooden gap blocks, allowing the top platform to spin while the gap blocks remain stationary.

One of the challenges during this construction process was that the inner ring of the turntable was rubbing against the gap blocks when spinning which was making it more difficult to spin. To fix this issue, the machinist used a mill to carve out some space on the gap blocks for the inner ring to spin over without contact. A major challenge that stopped us from completing the prototype is the fact that our large sprocket was not shipped to us in February as believed, so we had to contact McMaster to get it properly shipped. It was supposed to arrive this week, but the part got lost in delivery transit so we decided to downgrade to a 45 teeth sprocket instead of a 48 teeth, because it would be be able to ship here much quicker (by 3/26). This lowers our sprocket ratio from 6 to 5.6 instead but is necessary for us to complete the build in time. For the period of March 26 - April 16, we will meet up with the machinist to finish assembly on the roundabout after the large sprocket arrives, and then we will begin conducting validation tests for power and stability soon after assembly. Anticipated challenges would be our new large sprocket order getting lost in transit again.