For those of you who don’t know what a DSMT platform is, it stands for: Daniel Steward Memorial Tower Platform. Yup, Dan was a great team member who helped us build Solarbo last year and manage to help us produce gigantic assignments with heaps of waffle and extensive vocabular. Although there is a slight falacy in the title, he isn’t dead so we’re not mourning his death with this structure, just he left this degree we’re studying to find himself a proper vocation instead of this pseudo education we’re recieving.

For one of our design modules we have been set the task of producing a platform that is 400mm high, covering a surface area of 100x100mm and must sustain a mass of 100N and weigh as little as possible ideally 20grams although anything less would be marked higher.

After poking about with a few concepts for a design we finally settled for Rob’s design, partly because his design had calculation beside it and partly because I designed Solarbo… let us not remember what happened to poor old Solarbo.

Anyhow; the process in 4 simple steps:

1. Create a Template:
   
   Having done this, start positing the pieces.
2. Cut the Pieces:
   
   Obviously this goes before stage 1, but that isn’t the order I took the pictures in.
3. Right Angles:
   
   We used a large block of steel section that was square as a template. Attaching a chunk of thick balsa to it with tape we were able to pin the vertical piece of the structure to the chunk and squared that to the template so we were able to resume construction.
4. Inner Fixtures:
   
   After assembling the two halves of the design; we decided that internal torsional restraints should be put in to control the movement (or lack of).
5. Finally:
   
   After completing the whole of the two halves we assembled the parts effortlessly, then developed webbed flanges to disperse the load on the platform surface and similarly extended the legs’ footprint on the ground for more stability. Total weight/mass: 15.6 grams

I’ll let you know how the testing goes tomorrow. Enjoy!

*Updatey bit*
More pictures available here.

posted by a-v0id at 9:12 pm & filed under Uncategorizable! | 2 Comments »