First Assignment

Hello,

Although I may not have much experience with building tracks, my experiences with design work will be able to help me pull through whether that be trial and error or by calculations.  Making improvements to a track system may sound like an easy task but from what I have learned at my internship is that simple tasks will always become difficult because of the things you forget to implement into your design.  From reading the blogs about the small scale track, the sounds like an easy task looks like it will take a lot of work.  From my little experiences, I believe I can work with my groupmates to come up with a well-designed small scale track or an improvement on what has already been done.

I intend on improving the track system by making sure the bogie has a smooth transition in-between stops.  I am not too sure how the bogie system works and how it goes about turning but one way to have smooth transitions is to maybe have a moveable rail like trains do in order to move the vehicle accordingly.  Need to improve on switching arms.  At the moment piano wire is being used.  But a more robust wire can be easily obtained.  The hard part is getting the wire to the shape that is needed if it is too strong of a material.  Need to work on designing the track so the vehicle has a constant connection between the top and bottom of the rails.  Also the tracks should have a big turn radius to have less strain on the bogie.  But radius of turn should not be too big to the point that the track takes up a lot of space.  The width of the track will also need to be considered otherwise we could have unnecessary bending which can cause damages to the projects which is why communication is important and we should work closely with all project groups.  Seems like a lot of the problems occurring are due to project groups not working together since most small of the small scale designs did not work as planned.