Specifications

CT Corsair Final Report May 2, 2014
5
To accomplish motion restoration, the team needed to replace the lower scissor arms and
successfully select, calibrate and install system appropriate motors, drives and gearboxes.
Accompanying requirements included the construction of auxiliary control circuitry, the
mapping of IO requirements from hardware to software and an exploration of the proposed
Prepar3D simulation software.
3 Design Details
3.1 Design Deliverables
This year’s Phase II design team consists of senior undergraduate mechanical, electrical and
computer engineering students. The deliverables for the project are appropriately divided
amongst the disciplines depending on their areas of expertise.
The first deliverable of Phase II is the establishment of the simulator’s torque and electrical
requirements.
The second deliverable follows directly from the first deliverable: the selection of motors and
gearboxes which best fit the established design constraints. It is critical that the motors selected
do not interfere with any moving simulator components. Motor selection then facilitates the
selection of gearboxes, motor drives, control systems and commissioning software.
The third deliverable is a prototype used as a test-bed for control code development.
The fourth deliverable of the project was a new motor mount design. This was used to attach the
new gearbox and motor to the simulator base.
The fifth deliverable was the repair, installation and control of all simulator motors. This
deliverable involved the replacement of induction hardware pieces, an understanding of high
level analog servo drives, appropriate control circuitry and controlled programming via an
appropriate microcontroller.
The sixth deliverable was the incorporation of induction motor feedback and limit switches as
safety features. Feedback was obtained via potentiometer voltage readings. These were
incorporated onto encoder wheels. Upper and lower limit switches were mounted on the
maximum bounds of the moving cam, and wired to provide a flag to the controlling program that
direction of the cam must immediately be adjusted.
The seventh deliverable of Phase II is a redesign of the simulator’s lower scissor arms. These
arms attach to the bottom of the upper triangular base piece connected to the simulator base.
They act as dampers against the simulator's heaving. The redesign is necessary due to an over-
engineered and incorrectly sized model created by the previous Phase I senior design team.
The eighth deliverable of the project was a working SolidWorks assembly of the whole simulator
base.