Welds Complete and Painting Begins!

Our welds are complete and it is time to paint. After sandblasting most of our material and sanding the rest (that wouldn't fit in the blast box) we sprayed on high gloss black and yellow to show some school pride!

All parts machined, beginning welds

As you can see below, we have been working very hard to get our trailer in mater cut, bent, and machined. Now that it is all done, we can begin wielding!

A fun fact is that because our group chose to use aluminum tubing, we were required to use Tungsten Inert Gas Welding.

Spring Break and Still Working!

Happy Spring Break Everyone!

While most people are relaxing at home, we have begun work to get a lead on everyone else! Today we began cutting and bending our material. We will send updates soon!

Stress analysis of the trailer complete!

We recently completed the stress analysis of our trailer and are excited to announce that our design does not fail when subjected to loads greater than 200 lbs. This not only provides for an excellent factor of safety, but means we can now purchase our materials and soon get manufacturing started!

CAD drawings complete

We are excited to announce that our CAD drawings are complete!

You can see that our trailer is going to look great after it is cut, bent, machined, welded, painted, and put together!

More Features Finalized

When choosing a material for our trailer we first considered our maximum load requirement, followed by our weight requirement, followed by material availability and cost analysis.

Material	Yield Strength (psi)	Density (lbs/in^3)	Price 1ft length, 0.083 wall thickness, 1.25 inch O.D.	For 20ft
6061 T6 Aluminum Alloy	40,000	0.0975	$15.21	$304.20
304 Stainless Steel	25,000	0.288	$32.33	$646.60
316 Stainless Steel (Super Corrosion Resistant)	30,000	0.288	$31.00	$620.00
4130 Cromoly Alloy Steel (Easy Weld)	65,000	0.284	$11.53	$230.60

With the second to highest yield strength, lowest density (and therefore product weight), and low price point, we chose the 6061 T6 Aluminum Alloy which also happens to be extremely available partially because of the aircraft industry.

We got together and finalized  the trailers dimensions. These dimensions are made to carry a large load while still retaining the agility to safley navigate on single track trails as well as bike lanes. Our dimensions are: 63" Length x 19.5" Width x 16" Height with a clearance of 6" from the ground.

We also looked in to power generation. Our options include rotational energy, solar energy, and possibly the use of miniature wind turbines for wind energy. More on power generation to come soon!

Lastly, we recently found shock absorbers for our trailer and put in an order for two. They should arrive soon!

Our First Meeting of The Semester

We just met with Dr. Beyer for the first time this semester! This meeting provided a lot of motivation for us to get on the ball and get our project going. More to come soon!