Our team has been working diligently for hours every week trying to narrow down our competition time. Gloves with gorilla grips have been purchased and the team has been treating each trial run as a competition run. Time begins when the nuts, bolts, and tools are picked up from the staging area. After assembling both sides, attaching the lateral bracing, and tightening all of the bolts, the team averaged a time of 9 min 05 seconds! Well under our 10 minute goal! The “A-Team” is looking forward to Saturday and is ready to give competing schools a run for their money!

As the competition is quickly approaching, the team had to add one final touch to the bridge in order for it to be considered “complete.” Attached is a picture of our new logo cut by the water-jet machine in our local machine shop. Stephen took charge of this logo and created the outline for it on AutoCAD.

After making some final adjustments, and practicing the assembly of the bridge, the team was able to weigh the bridge in full. Including lateral bracing, bolts, and members the final weight of the bridge is 161 lbs!! Well under the 200 lb limit we set for ourselves and our estimated weight of 172 lbs.

With only a few kinks left to bang out, the team is preparing for the upcoming competition by making the bridge a transportation box. The competition will be held at NJIT and needs to be able to be easily transported to and from TCNJ.  The members of the bridge, along with a number of other items must be transported. These items include our bolts, safety helmets, construction tools, and tool belts. The goal for the team is to create a box on wheels similar to that of last years’ team. We plan to uphold the TCNJ Steel Bridge Team tradition by mounting the previous years name plate to the side of the box.

The team is about one week away from practicing! Our final steps include melding the welds, ordering bolts, and painting the final model. Each weld was checked by our machine shop technician and each team member took turns learning how to meld. Overall a fun and interesting process!

After performing an analysis, the team was able to create and execute a design for lateral bracing. Lateral bracing is used to minimize horizontal deflection, an important factor for the competition.

The team has been working hard every day this break (excluding snow days). We are happy to announce that all of the members for the bridge have been assembled and tack-welded. Today marks the second day that we are fully-welding the assemblies in order to drill the final holes and attach the required plates. Below you can see Mr. Zanetti teaching Stephen and Ross how to weld. Also pictured below is Danielle grinding down the stake welds for the telescoping section. This experience has been both rewarding and fun for the entire team.

Since most of the team members are new at cutting steel, we experienced a few bumps in the road. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by placing a small order for new steel! The team hopes to complete the bridge in its entirety before the end of break in order to begin practicing when classes start. We want to take this time to say happy holidays and we hope everyone has a happy new year!

The team broke ground on Friday and began cutting steel! Majority of the members have been cut and most have been smoothed at their ends. The team plans on cutting the angles required for the diagonal members tomorrow. This next week will be spent in the machine shop with Mr. Zanetti in order to stay ahead of the game!

We are excited to announce that our steel will be arriving on Friday! We would like to take this time to thank Tri-Steel Fabricators again for their generous donation. Moving forward, the team has created a fabrication schedule in order to keep our progress on track. We are excited to start the next phase of our project!