Motivation

For those of you new to Steel Bridge check out the AISC's 2007 Nationals Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yquKTMeoLO8

It's a good introduction to steel bridge, especially the fun and madness of Nationals.

As for our progress, the design/organization/fabrication meeting was great last weekend we're that much closer to having a working shop, shouldn't be long before we're fully stocked. It was also good to confirm that some of our previoiusly unattempted ideas are going to work as planned. We're getting very close to doing some real fabrication, if we could just get those darned connections nailed down.

Halloween Crunch Time

Final Detailing is underway, we've still got a few outstanding issues that must be resolved and we have got to get those connections finalized. Our fundraising / sponsorship / partnership push is in full swing and off to a promising start. We should be getting some new equipment soon and be ready to start working through some ideas with the real stuff.



Keep Hammering away folks, follow up with your contacts, explore the creative solutions, gently prode the machinists. Only a few more weeks until the real fun starts. Let's turn paper to steel.

Best "Nerd Cosutmes" Ever! They even brought props!

AWS Meeting

We had another great meeting last night with the American Welding Society. The AWS has become a tremendous friend to the steel bridge team, their wisdom, experience, and contacts within the industry have become an extremely valuable asset. We greatly appreciate the Kansas City AWS Chapter for welcoming us into their meeting again this year and hope that their are many more years ahead of us.

Connections

The shop drawings are off to the folks at CNR, they'll be cutting a few at different sizes and tolerances for us on the CNC so that we can test and make final decisions on the connections. From there we will be able to finalize the design. Things are coming together quickly, hopefully we won't need to make to many iterations with the connections to get them right.

Don't forget the fundraising, as always it is critical to our success and its much easier to do now than in the winter when we're fab'ing and practicing.

Who knew Gators Could Move so Fast?

Check out the 2007 Florida Gators breaking off a 3:30 Nationals construction run. The Gators are also showing off their hip dance moves and strange WWE pre-construciton routine (whatever it takes to get ready).

Hope we're there to see the Gators rolling in their own building, 261 days and counting.

Progress

We're down to two design concepts. This week we'll be exploring the geometric variations, connection layouts, section sizes, girder cross-sections, etc. for each of the two concepts. Once we've developed a healthy amount of options we'll model each of them, compare the efficiencies, explore construction sequences, and estimate construction times. This weeks analysis should position us nicely for another narrowing of options.

We've added more tools to our arsenal as we have a very good lead on a CNC facility willing to help us fabricate connections, which could dramatically impact some of the design decision we make. We'll want to move quickly on this front, though, because we want plenty of time to test any out of the box ideas we might pursue.

"Bolt Consolidation" Its never to early to consider, but be careful of the new rules.

Brain Pains

We pulled out the 2007 Bridge last night (it was only a little rusted, hopefully everyone has their tetanus shot up to date) to attempt implementing some new construction strategies on the new construction layout - builders, barges, assemblies, members, lots of possibilities exist.

The Good News first - we think we determined the most viable construction configuration (builders and barges) and we should be able to incorporate that into the connection design and layout.

The Bad News - We were slooooooow! Part of this can be attributed to inexperience with the layout and some new team members but it was obvious that achieving the times of last year was going to be difficult. It appears that being minimalistic over the river is going to be critical to construction times, but how does that jive with the importance of stiffness? Is it possible to make a beam or double truss stiff enough for it to be a viable option, given the decking envelope is it even possible to make a stiff simple span?

We'll take this information and incorporate it into our analysis, all together its shaping up to be a very challenging design year. We will be having a more formal design meeting next week, time and location to follow, so keep brainstorming and refining designs.