Jinhao Cui's blog

This week, we have discussed to reduce our cost of the material, labor cost, and etc. The final decision is that to switch from steel to plywood. However, there are things that we need to focus on choosing the correct plywood. If the plywood we use has avoids, there will be problems when we do laser cutting. Therefore, finding the supplier and get the correct plywood is essential to this semester.

In this week, from the meeting, we basically have a general target on what we need to do for this semester. 1. Most structural parts will be using wood instead of sheet metal. 2.  Joint will be using steel as we designed. 3. Need to think of a new way to make exam whether the wood structure will hold.

This week is a quick review of what we, as full-size bogie team, has done so far. From last semester, the biggest concern for this project is funding. Based on our Gantt Chart, we need about $10,000 to build the desired prototype. This means the bogie can be used in the future and can support 20,000N of weight. From today's meeting, obviously, the budget cannot satisfy our desire. Therefore, there will be a meeting with fundraisers next week, which we can decide how to reduce our cost.