Posted on

Myles’s Status Report for 3/16

Personal Accomplishments:

  • Lab Meetings (4 hrs):
    • met with the team to discuss work distribution with people being away from campus
  • Indiviudual Work (8 hrs):
    • designed multiple propelling coils and tested and calculated their magnetic strength
    • Wrote an initial script to work with remote control and ultrasonic sensor.

Progress:

I worked with our ultrasonic sensors and remote controls this week and interfaced with them through the Arduino microcontroller. I wrote initial scripts to get readings from the ultrasonic, so we know what to program when attaching the ultrasonic to the carrier. I worked with Emanuel and we designed a couple of speed coils (solenoids). We did calculations of how much magnetic strength each solenoid would be able to output. We found with our current solenoids, we are achieving magnetic fields of about 4.5 * 10^-2 Tesla, and 4.5 teslas when accounting for the steel core, which in our case is a standard bolt.  Given this calculation, we found we were not generating as much force as expected when setting up our coils underneath our carrier. We had issues understanding how we could connect a power supply to our h-bridge so we found it difficult to feed sufficient amounts of current to our solenoid. The primary option to mitigate this is to make our solenoid larger with more turns and make those turns tighter which would lessen our length factor when it comes to magnetic strength.  When it comes to remote control we found a remote control, transceiver set which is fairly simple to integrate using a microcontroller. We will have users use this remote control to control this train. We unfortunately were not able to get to printing our track and carrier we hope to finish our CAD design this week and have the pieces printed while Emanuel and I are away at the NSBE national convention.

NOTE – I realized I made an error in not accounting for the fact that the magnetic field strength of the solenoid drops off drastically with a factor of R^3. We are not getting as much force as expected because the coils are too far from the carrier. It would help however to have our coils take up a wide radius and have more turns as well.

Next Week Deliverables:

  1. Have CAD track and carrier ready to 3D print
  2. Make 4 solenoids with magnetic strength output at least double of our current design.
Posted on

Angel’s Status Report for 3/16

  • Weekly Team Meeting (2hr)
    • Discuss design changes for the track and carrier t
    • Discuss how to best implement the ultrasonic sensor and linear hall effect sensor
  • Mandatory Meeting (4hr)
    • Discuss design changes for the track
    • Go over feedback from design review
  • Independent Work (6hr)
    • Change one-to-one carrier/track magnet design
    • Reattempt two-to-one carrier/track magnet design
    • Test linear hall effect sensor

 

Through out this week I spent time working on the design of two prototypes. I rebuilt the straight away one-to-one track with less spacing between the magnets to stop magnets from the carrier getting stuck. While this helped with that problem, it made it clear that a one-to-one system is unstable. I attempted to redesign the two-to-one carrier/track. In this design two aligned rows of magnets were placed on the track. However, given that the magnets are circular, parts of the track had gaps as seen in the picture below. These gaps resulted in carrier magnets getting stuck on the track.  I have created a new design in which the magnets (2cm diameter) are misaligned by 1cm. I plan to implement this design early next week.

I also tested the linear hall effect. I tested how the linear hall effect behaved when a magnet was near the sensor, far from the sensor and when a magnet moves along it. I used this information to better understand the data I was receiving from the Arduino and how to interpret that information into something usable.

 

We updated our schedule earlier this week to more accurately reflect what we have complete and what we know hope to complete. Therefore, I am currently on schedule.

 

Next Week

In the following work, I plan to build my new design for the two-to-one track/magnet design. I also want to work with my teammates to see how to add a speed coil to the one-to-one track/magnet design given its only problem currently is stability. Lastly, I would like to start signal processing for the linear hall effect sensor.

 

Posted on

Emanuel’s Status Report for 3/9

  • Mandatory Lab (4 hr.)
    • Met with TA and Professor to discuss feedback from presentation
  • Design Report (4 hr.)
    • Completed the Introduction, Use-Case Requirements, Design Requirements
  • Design Research and Self-Time (4 hr.)
    • Modified CAD design for straightaway track and carrier prototype
    • Worked on the speed-up coil

Schedule:

As of now, we are behind schedule. Again, we would have liked to have our track and carrier printed out, but since we are still waiting for the 3D printing filament, we are still bound to work with cardboard and try to improve our cardboard designs. I also would have liked to have finished at least one speed-uup coil, but I haven’t been able to either because the available copper wires in TechSpark were too thick to complete the 200 turns we wanted or the copper wire wasn’t conducted, meaning that the current couldn’t pass through the coil. This has caused further research to be done in order to find the exact copper wire that is both thin enough to complete the 200 turns, as well as conducted to allow for the current to run through the coil.

Next Week’s Schedule:

  • Fully printed out carrier and track
  • H-Bridge Circuitry w/ Speed-Up Coil
Posted on

Myles’s Status Report for 3/9

Personal Accomplishments:

  • Lab Meetings (4 hrs):
    • met with the Professor and TA to discuss the design review presentation
  • Indiviudual Work (8 hrs):
    • wrote the testing, validation section, architecture of operations, and bill of materials
    • Wrote initial Arduino script and constructed basic circuit with PWM

Progress:

Behind Schedule – This week I implemented the Arduino script to send PWM inputs to the H-Bridge. The script periodically would switch the direction of the current. We set up a circuit with a miniature propeller as the motor connected to the H-Bridge. With the periodic propeller switch in the script the direction the propeller spins would switch. We are behind schedule in that we still need to design a new CAD track and carrier that addresses our stability issues. Next week, I plan to figure out and research how the ultrasonic and Hall Effect output information and how to read it properly.

Next Week Deliverables:

  1. redesign track and carrier with connection grooves for increased stability
  2. Write the initial script for the hall effect and ultrasonic sensors. The main goal is to figure out how the output of the sensor and how to interface with them with the Arduino.
Posted on

Team Status Report for 3/9

Risks:

A major risk in our project currently is ensuring the carrier can stably levitate along the track. While the carrier can levitate in the initial straightaway prototype, this levitation is not straight or stable. Future designs need to consider adding longer elongated carrier sides and a smaller gap between the track and the carrier’s elongated sides. We are also considering having two lanes of magnets on the track instead of just one to account for the stability, automatically.

Design Changes:

Spacing between magnets has reduced

The length of the extended sides is larger in hopes of providing more stability

Schedule Changes:

Pushed back prototype 2 design

A was written by Angel Nyaga, B was written by Emanuel Abiye, and C was written by Myles Mwathe

 

Part A: Global Factors

The product solution meets global factors by providing a user-friendly interface and an educational opportunity to any user, regardless of their country of origin. The user interface in our project will either be a remote or a series of buttons. Both systems will have buttons instructing the track to go from one part of the track to another. While we will provide instructions on how to use the track in English, understanding how the user interface works is not limited to English speakers. Additionally, the electromagnetic principles that can be taught using the remote-controlled maglev train are not limited to English speakers because these lessons are primarily visual. Therefore, our product solution is accessible to a wide variety of individuals of different languages, cultures, and experiential backgrounds.

 

Part B: Cultural Factors

When it comes to MagLev trains, only three countries have fully implemented them into their transportation systems: China, Japan, and South Korea. Certain factors such as the cost of implementing MagLev trains into their transportation systems, not being able to use the current infrastructure for MagLev trains, etc. play roles in why nations are not looking into implementing MagLev trains into their transportation systems. What we want out of HoverRail is to serve as a learning tool, to show the benefits of MagLev trains. With such knowledge on these kinds of trains as well as seeing the benefits and comparing the pros of MagLev trains with current model trains, we want it to help change the minds of nations and their government or their transportation agency to see how beneficial and more efficient transportation would be in their nation if they replaced current trains with MagLev trains, regardless of cost and not being able to use current infrastructure. We also hope that beyond influencing the opinions of nations, we want it to help influence individuals and their thoughts on MagLev trains. Some people may have never heard of this kind of train and may only be used to the current trains in their nation, and once we introduce HoverRail to such individuals, we hope that we influence their beliefs on transportation, such that these individuals would want to see a fully scaled MagLev train being implemented in their country. There might also be those who are totally against innovating the train systems in their country and may want to stick with the traditional method or stick with the traditional train designs. For these individuals, though it may be hard to fully influence them from their beliefs, we hope that the introduction of HoverRail could spark some sort of dialogue or some contemplation of this new design of trains amongst these individuals, and hopefully to the point where they ease up on their beliefs and become more accepting of innovation and replacing traditional train designs with MagLev trains.

 

Part C: Environmental Factors

HoverRail does not create much waste leading to low environmental impact. Our MVP will be at most 1-meter long and the carrier will not have a massive size. HoverRail does pose safety concerns when it comes to people wearing conductive materials near the track and carrier. Because of this, warning signs will be provided very clearly with the product. Our product is intended to be durable and reusable. We want electromagnetics students to be able to use HoverRail as a learning tool, and such a tool needs to be durable and readily available multiple times over. HoverRail is not meant to be discarded after a certain amount of uses, the users are meant to keep using the trainset as many times as possible. Lastly, when it comes to the consumption of natural resources as it pertains to HoverRail, we aim to make all of the materials needed to operate our train system easy to attain. We want HoverRail to be easily replicated in classrooms or home environments. Because of this, we avoided the use of obscure materials like Liquid nitrogen which increases the strength of the magnets by dropping the temperature.

Posted on

Angel’s Status report for 3/9

The following work was completed between 2/25 – 3/9 (week prior to spring break – end of spring break)

  • Mandatory Labs (4hrs)
  • Individual work (6hrs)
    • Finalized straightaway cardboard prototype with cardboard carrier
    • Attempted to create straightaway cardboard prototype with cardboard carrier
    • Modify CAD design for straightaway track and carrier prototype
  • Design Report (6hrs)
    • Complete Design Trade Studies and System Implementation

Through out the past two week, I have spent time further developing cardboard prototypes for the track and carrier maglev. I attempted to create two prototypes for the straightaway track and carrier. The first involved having a 1-1 relationship between the track magnets and carrier magnet. While this design successfully levitated the carrier, there were issues with stability. In attempt to create a more stable design, I created a prototype with a 2-1 track magnet to carrier magnet ratio. Due to errors with spacing (the track magnets were too far apart on the track), this design created a carrier that was attracted to the space between the track magnets, resulting in no levitation. I plan to reattempt this design with less spacing between the track magnets to see if the system will be more stable.

Also, completing the initial straightway track and carrier from cardboard showed that the spacing in the current CAD design of the straightaway track is too large. The best spacing between ends of a magnet is roughly 3 centimeters. I plan to make modifications to all CAD track designs to meet these specifications.

 

Next Week 

In the following week, I hope to start printing the CAD design for straightaway track and carrier. Secondly, I would like to start working on a prototype for the oval shaped track. Lastly, I would like to start working with the ultrasonic sensor and the hall effect to start to design the start, stop, and speed system.