Week 8 - Spartan Superway Internship (Final Week)

With the last week of my Spartan Superway internship, I began to make final revisions to my design. We plan to send the design out to a manufacturing company, where they will cut our design out of sheet metal and fold it for us. It will take approximately 3 weeks for its production, so by the start of Fall 2017, those working on the Spartan Superway for their senior project will be able to assemble it.

The first step I did was to revise the top and bottom L brackets that attach the mount to the L beams of the track. I made them smaller to accommodate the new design, but still being able to slide them along the the tracks for adjustability. 

Figure 1: Revised brackets with mount and beams

With the widened track, I also extended the bolt slots of the bottom of the mounts to reach the 3.5 meter distance between the two tracks. Lastly, I added bolt holes to the frame to allow the braces and the top and bottom pieces to be connected. Unfortunately since we do not know which panels we will be using (as each panel's mounting hole setup is different), I could not add bolt holes to connect the solar panels to the mounts.

Figure 2: Mount with bolt holes

With these revisions, I believe that this design is ready to be manufactured and tested.

As my last week comes to an end, I can gladly say that I have enjoyed every moment of this internship. I hope to return to the Spartan Superway during my senior year for 2017-2018 to be able to continue the work I have contributed or to be able to work on other aspects of the project too. Overall this internship gave me the opportunity to work with and learn from professional engineers in the industry and has immensely improved my abilities as a mechanical engineer. Looking back to my first weeks as an intern here and seeing how much my CAD drawings have improved has shown me how much this internship has helped better prepare me for the professional field and I am forever grateful for the opportunity, all the things I have learned, and the new friends I have made.