Track work at FRC
Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:59 pm
Last Saturday, O'Brie, Steve and I did a bit of a marathon session (about five hours) of work continuing the project to improve power on the track rails. The idea has always been to solder all the track pieces together, leaving areas where we could remove sections for future maintenance. We had divided this into six sections as shown below:
At our previous similar session we had completed sections 1 and 2. On Saturday we completed sections 3 and 4, as well as part of section 5. We also installed and connected junction boxes for the completed sections. The boxes join the soldered sections together so that we will effectively have one continuous piece of track when the job is finished.
We also took the opportunity to move the lane changer directly behind the pits down away from the preceding corner and closer to the carousel entrance. This will stop those annoying unwanted lane changes when the car slides exiting the preceding corner. This change is reflected in the diagram above.
It eventually started to get too dark to see the details needed to continue the soldering and we packed up. Here are a few more pics taken not long before packing up:
We just rested section 5 on the table since more solder work is necessary. We'll have to dedicate next Saturday afternoon to completion of at least this section in order to have the track useable for next week's event.
At our previous similar session we had completed sections 1 and 2. On Saturday we completed sections 3 and 4, as well as part of section 5. We also installed and connected junction boxes for the completed sections. The boxes join the soldered sections together so that we will effectively have one continuous piece of track when the job is finished.
We also took the opportunity to move the lane changer directly behind the pits down away from the preceding corner and closer to the carousel entrance. This will stop those annoying unwanted lane changes when the car slides exiting the preceding corner. This change is reflected in the diagram above.
It eventually started to get too dark to see the details needed to continue the soldering and we packed up. Here are a few more pics taken not long before packing up:
We just rested section 5 on the table since more solder work is necessary. We'll have to dedicate next Saturday afternoon to completion of at least this section in order to have the track useable for next week's event.
