Track work at FRC
Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 11:59 am
Hi Guys,
Yesterday afternoon Laird and O'Brie joined me to help do some planned track maintenance and I'm happy to say that we were successful in the things we attempted to accomplish.
The first thing done was to remove the errant lane changer at the end of the downhill back straight (where cars would recently hit the misbehaving flipper) and replace it with two brand new radius 2 track pieces, eliminating the infrequently-used lane change in that corner. The next important one was the following left-hand lane change just below the highest point on the track which had stopped working for the past event or two. This is an important and frequently-used lane change, so we removed it and opened up the electronic and mechanical component covers, sprayed out everything with electronic cleaner, removed a little "grass" which had worked its way into one area and lubed the solenoid arms. Before putting it back in place, I had noticed a dip in the inner rails of the preceding straight section which I fixed and the good news is that the lane change is now working fine again.
Our last objective was to test the race management software (SSDC) and try to get it working reliably again as well as to try to understand what was causing the problems we had stopped using it for. I had suspected that my RichG cable which connects the power base to the computer may have been damaged when it was left wound round one of the table horses while raising the track. To this end, O'Brie had lent me his RichG cable to test things with and again everything worked fine with it. We then swapped back my cable and it would not work. We re-attached O'Brie's cable and it immediately worked again. This confirmed that my cable is damaged and O'Brie kindly left his cable at FRC until mine is either repaired or replaced. To this end he routed and attached it under the table with the other wires, leaving the end free to connect to the USB extension and into the computer.
Here are a few pics from the session:
O'Brie checks out the power base in preparation for a test while Laird looks on.
Testing the RichG cable. We just ran it from the power base over the track to the computer.
We used three of the new FTC Ferraris to run the tests. We tested practice, lap-limited and time-limited races and all worked fine.
One test race result showing that everything works.
So, it looks like we'll be having the SSDC RMS in action at out next event.
See you on the circuit...
Gordon
Yesterday afternoon Laird and O'Brie joined me to help do some planned track maintenance and I'm happy to say that we were successful in the things we attempted to accomplish.
The first thing done was to remove the errant lane changer at the end of the downhill back straight (where cars would recently hit the misbehaving flipper) and replace it with two brand new radius 2 track pieces, eliminating the infrequently-used lane change in that corner. The next important one was the following left-hand lane change just below the highest point on the track which had stopped working for the past event or two. This is an important and frequently-used lane change, so we removed it and opened up the electronic and mechanical component covers, sprayed out everything with electronic cleaner, removed a little "grass" which had worked its way into one area and lubed the solenoid arms. Before putting it back in place, I had noticed a dip in the inner rails of the preceding straight section which I fixed and the good news is that the lane change is now working fine again.
Our last objective was to test the race management software (SSDC) and try to get it working reliably again as well as to try to understand what was causing the problems we had stopped using it for. I had suspected that my RichG cable which connects the power base to the computer may have been damaged when it was left wound round one of the table horses while raising the track. To this end, O'Brie had lent me his RichG cable to test things with and again everything worked fine with it. We then swapped back my cable and it would not work. We re-attached O'Brie's cable and it immediately worked again. This confirmed that my cable is damaged and O'Brie kindly left his cable at FRC until mine is either repaired or replaced. To this end he routed and attached it under the table with the other wires, leaving the end free to connect to the USB extension and into the computer.
Here are a few pics from the session:
O'Brie checks out the power base in preparation for a test while Laird looks on.
Testing the RichG cable. We just ran it from the power base over the track to the computer.
We used three of the new FTC Ferraris to run the tests. We tested practice, lap-limited and time-limited races and all worked fine.
One test race result showing that everything works.
So, it looks like we'll be having the SSDC RMS in action at out next event.
See you on the circuit...
Gordon
Laird 
Good come back GG