Week 2 - Spartan Superway Internship

For the second week of this internship, I began drawing up some designs in CAD for our mounting and racking system for the solar panels. Our goals are to create a curved array for aesthetics and panels accessible from below the canopy for easy repairs, if needed.

First, I created a 5x25 solar panel array with angles that begin from 10 degrees all the way down to 30 degrees. We chose 125 panels because we found from previous reports that this amount was needed to power a 150m section of track. These angles were chosen because 10 degrees is the minimum angle to prevent buildup of dust and debris, and 30 degrees was the optimal angle we found for the solar panels for San Jose. The resulting array can be found below:

Figure 1: Curved Solar Panel Array

In addition to the array design, I also came up with a design for the mounting system that will allow the panels to be accessible from below. With the addition of creating a technician's pod that can ride along the existing tracks, we will be able to remove the need for any lift to access the panels from above. My first design consists of two posts that the solar panel will slide into on one side, allowing it to only need support on the opposite side with a single screw. This will help aid in single person repairs and hopefully make these panels easier to access.

Figure 2: PV Mount Design #1

Lastly, I assisted Eric with repairs on the TAZ Lulzbot 3 3D printer here in the shop. We found that the head was clogged and required cleaning, as well as many other settings needing to be adjusted. We found that the wrong size filament was being used and it caused some clogging. Eric was able to clear the nozzle and get the filament to extrude correctly. Lastly, we calibrated every axis and found Cura profiles online to use for our printer. We were finally able to achieve some clean 3D prints, and will continue to make tiny adjustments to the settings in order to get it to print how we need it.