Kaelan Song SPARTAN Superway Blog

This week the 12th scale teams delivered their presentations and received respective feedback. All of the 12th scale model teams have begun to move forward with their sub projects in regards to dimensions and what not, and suggestions as to how each team could improve/add to their projected were bounced back between our cabin team, the bogie team, and the controls team. I will hopefully be able to get a CAD model of the cabin drawn up by next class meeting .

Following plans as per our Gantt chart, I plan on making a first draft of CAD models for the cabin based off of sketches I and Darren have developed. These CAD drawings will serve to provide a physical understanding of how the podcar will related to the rest of the 12th scale model project and to see where/what revisions will need to be made in the future.

This week we established set communication lines between us and the other teams of the 12th scale model (slack.com). Hopefully, this will allow for us to exchange ideas and files smoothly and make things much simpler. In addition my teammate and I narrowed down our design ideas and will continue to further narrow it down to a single design. The main design revolves around the aesthetics and door system, though the main difficulty presented will be continuously communicating with the controls and bogie team. While the controls team only needs to feed us their physical info, the dependence on the bogie team and their dependence on us is not yet quite established.

Following our presentations, we were given feedback from a multitude of persons. Since our core concept revolves primarily around aesthetics, we took suggestions and things to consider from our instructors. One of the things we were told to give thought to was how it would be viewed from the underside. People may not be too fond of looking up only to see a giant looming box, so some transparent portions may be incorporated into the final design. Additionally, the cabins should be made to fit with their environment.

This week I was assigned a partner and designated to the team responsible for developing the cabin for the 12th scale model. After being given the objectives, I consulted with Dr. Furman regarding what aspects and features I should look for in designing the cabin. Keeping physical aspects such as aerodynamics and weight in mind, the cabin should have a somewhat futuristic look to it to accommodate the futuristic concept. Research is to be conducted between me and my partner in order to give a brief presentation on our findings and plans for the following week.

Hello! My name is Kaelan Y Song, and this post serves to provide a brief introduction about myself and why I am interested in being a part of the SPARTAN Superway project. I developed an interest in engineering sometime around my junior year in high school when introductory PLTW courses were first introduced at my school. I entered in engineering design competitions with my friends/teammates (mostly for the free food, but no one needs to know that). Since then I have combined that interest with my hobby in small arms/firearms and decided to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Upon graduation I would like to pursue a career in small arms design at a company such as Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, etc. The aspects of the SPARTAN Superway project that appealed to me most was the ambition behind the idea. Something of this caliber is nothing shy of grand (at least in terms of size and work), but I find it to be something definitely worth looking into and working on. Reforming ...