I made it to Albany Steel today and picked up some stock for the tech demo unit. Went down to the shop later on, and made both straps (The W-shaped components which hold the Inventory Tubes to the mount). I constructed them from 0.060" Steel (16ga). I realized halfway through that 16 gauge is overkill. The design of the straps, while elegant and easily replaced with on-site manufactured components, is actually quite a pain to bend on the sheet-metal equipment here at RPI. I didn't realize we didn't have a pan-head bender available, which would make some of the middle bends much easier. Thus, I'm going to reproduce the components from 0.030" steel, redesign the rest of the system's components for this thickness, and attempt to improve the design of the straps to ease production.
I also picked up a small section of 3" square aluminum tube for the Inventory Tubes, and realized again that it's overkill. I'm using a 3/16" wall thickness component, which looks ludicrously overbuilt. I'm looking into finding 1/8" or thinner square tube, or perhaps a sheet metal alternative. The shape of the tubes isn't conducive to sheet metal bending, but perhaps I can work a solution.
After speaking with John, the shop foreman, he recommended having most of the sheet metal components cut using a water jet cutter. This should ease construction, and reduce the amount of layout required -- which we both realize will be a huge pain. Unfortunately, the laser cutter (which has more than ten times the precision of the water jet) is too low wattage to cut plate steel. I'm looking into alternative laser-cutters, I've heard rumors of a 85W unit (compared to the 45W in Johnsson) somewhere on campus, so this will be a possibility.
In the meantime, I'm going to source 0.030" steel, and source and cut the wooden mockup components. I'm also in the process of assembling supplies for the scraperod.
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