Week 5

We ordered a few items to improve the rail. We ordered an 8 gauge and 10 gauge wire for better connection of electricity. The previous wires on the solar controller were gauge 12 which does not allow as much current. We also got more screws and nuts that is a good fit. The previous screws were difficult to find matching nuts.

The copper rails were also all removed from the PVC pipes.  We decided to redesign the way that the copper rails were joined to each other.  Last week, we simply unscrewed each joining copper rail and overlapped them such that the current collector would drop from one copper rail to another as it rides through separate copper rails.  This puts too much unnecessary stress on the current collector.  In addition, the shoes also got stuck at some points along the track.  So we just took out all the rails and cut each end at a 40 degree angle.  To connect two rails, we match the angled cuts together like a puzzle and also add a copper backing to hold the two rails together with screws.  We used a slightly bigger drill bit as a countersink to redrill the holes in the copper to make it flush with the copper rails.