Day: June 26, 2019

Hello all!

We have built the aluminium framework that forms the base of our entire lifting system. The dimensions were informed by our prior calculations on Monday, 24th June, which involved finding the centre of gravity (CG) of our pneumatic unit.

<to be updated>

In case you forgot already, our actual pneumatic unit from the SMRT Tuas Depot was supposed to arrive yesterday (20th June). Unfortunately, a puncture tyre poked a hole in that plan.

Finally this afternoon, our friendly LTA engineer secured another van to deliver the actual, new pneumatic unit to the Making & Tinkering Lab for us to work on. (unit labelled with a big red circle in case you can’t see it amongst the organised mess of the bench)

As a comparison, here is the old unit (now sadly dumped into a corner of the MnT lab store)

Now, we were in for a slightly nasty surprise – there were a few key differences between the old and the new unit, which increases the obstacles for our clamping system and makes our life significantly harder.

Presence of wiring system and additional metal rod on the top side of the unit

• • The original unit. (the top side is to the right) As you can see, it is extremely bare around the parameter
  • The new unit:
  • These wires and the rod present a significant obstacle to our clamping system. as we realised that any of the gaps between the original grey metal bar of the pneumatic unit and the wires/bar (see below images) is too small for the aluminium profiles of our clamping mechanism to fit
    (the 2020 aluminium profile is too thick to fit through the first gap)
    
    (the 2020 aluminium profile is also too thick to fit through the second gap – although it can squeeze through the two metal bars, it is blocked by the base of the unit):
  • As such, our clamp will have to come from all the way above these wires.
  • Luckily, the design of our clamp uses angle brackets which allow easy adjustment of the width of the clamp, so all it needed was to unscrew the angle brackets, adjust the width of the clamp, and to screw the brackets in again

Additional enlarged metal handle in middle of unit

• • The old unit:
    
  • The new unit:
  • This metal handle is significantly larger than that on the old unit, and it even overhangs beyond the base of the new unit. Thus, our clamping system will have to avoid this metal handle.

Well, time to work on revising our clamping system so that we can overcome these challenges! Adios, for now.