Week 4

We put our final touches on the collector shoes and continued to fix the power rails.  After our group presentation, Dr. Furman and Claude suggested that we come up with a way to connect the copper rails without any overlapping.  Most likely this would mean we will have to take apart all the rails from the track.  It will be worth the effort because without a good power rail, the bogie will not run.  In addition, it may be best to redrill each of the holes in the copper with a countersink.  The countersink will make screws flush with the surface of the copper.  We also did a little brainstorming of how to get the collector shoes to derail and rerail during a track change.  We decided that it may be required to have the bogie operate using on-board battery power during the time of the track change.

We also figured out that the solar panels will not charge the batteries. The solar charge controller have a blown fuse, which will act as an open circuit and prevent the current going to the batteries. We will have to reorder a fuse that is made for the charge controller. The fuse claims that it is a 250V 0.5A fuse. This means the previous team surpassed the limits. Voltages from a 90-degree sunlight with four solar panels will receive about 100V.