Gravity Battery Update: 2/15/2017

This week all three gears were printed out at the correct thickness. One of the gears stopped printing towards the end because the filament on the 3D printer ran out, but for testing purposes that should be fine. Now that I have all three gears I can attach them to the rods I cut last week and put them on the t-slot stand. When it was convenient for him, I talked with Dr. Cummings and he showed Dr. Bellis and I how to hold the smaller t-slots still when drilling holes into them. Tomorrow I am going to drill the holes into the t-slots and attach the gears in a row. We realized that it is difficult to get the axles through the thicker gears, so it will take longer than we expected to hook them all together. We plan to test out if these gears will spin the bike dynamo when hooked together. A picture of the three gears with the axles partially in them is below.

Gravity Battery Update: 2/07/2017

This week I increased the thickness of three of the gear sets I will be using in the final gear train. I am currently waiting for them to be done printing out. Since these gear sets are much thicker than the test gears, they take a longer time to print out. I located a hacksaw so I could cut through the steel rods I am using for the axles. I cut through two of them, leaving me with four axles, so I can test the three gears we are printing out. I put one of the shorter axles on the apparatus and put a bolt on either side to hold the rod in place (pictures below). For the rest of this week I am going to talk with Dr. Cummings and figure out the best way to drill holes in the t-slots so we the axles will be even. Below I also included pictures of how the test gears mesh together on one side and don't run into each other on the other side.