Gravity Battery Update: 1/24/2017

I met with Dr. Bellis last week and we made a game plan for the semester. After discussing different aspects of the project with him I started working. Last week and in the beginning of this week I tested the strength of the steel rods I plan to use to hold the gears in my gear train. To do this, I put together the base of the t-slots that will be holding the gear train and I attached the rod between two t-slots that have holes drilled in them (done last semester) to keep the rod in place. I hung up to 50 lbs on the rod without any issues. I tested the rod because when the gear train is put together there is going to be a lot of force on the gears so I need to make sure the structure holding everything is stable. While it was important to test the rod's strength, I was also testing the holes we made in the t-slots last semester to see if they would hold the rod when weight was hung from them. Hanging weight straight down doesn't seem to be an issue, but I noticed part of the structure is able to move because it isn't supported on all sides. (See pictures attached).

Another thing I did was recreate gears in SolidWorks so I could 3D print them to test whether or not the gears will mesh when hooked together the way we need them to be. I had some trouble because the program was not cooperating so it took me longer than normal, but I finished the test files and sent them to Dr. Kolonko who has kindly agreed to print some of my test files for me.

For the end of this week and next week I plan on testing the rod up to 100 lbs and seeing how that affects the structure. I will be thinking of a way we can fix the structural issues we have run into (and fixing them as soon as I can) as well as answering the challenge question(s) Dr. Bellis has asked me. Once the test gears are printed I will be testing those to see if they mesh the way we need them to.