Thomas Choplickengineering Design 100November 20, 2015

Thomas ChoplickEngineering Design 100November 20, 2015

CAD Locomotive Drawing

The project that I have created is a locomotive. The reason that I chose this drawing was that I wanted to work on a CAD project that was both challenging and fun. The challenging part for me was to be able to mate the piston assembly onto the main base or frame of the steam engine so that it would mate perfectly with the locomotive’s connecting rods on the driving wheels. The fun part of this experiment was that locomotives and trains were a big part of my childhood and I wanted to enjoy them one last time before I applied myself out into the real world.

The locomotive in the picture contains the following parts as follows. You have the cab where the driver and the firemen control the engine and make the fire, the boiler where the water is heated, the dome where the water is converted into steam and is transferred into the cylinder of the locomotive, the piston, piston rod, connecting rod which connects to the locomotive’s driving wheels. Other parts of the locomotive entail the buffers at the very front of the locomotive’s frame, and the front wheels assembly just behind the buffers underneath the frame of the front of the locomotive. All parts of the driving wheels assembly and the piston assembly are connected by a series of bolts and rod connectors.

The basis of this locomotive were slightly based off of two locomotives. The first being the County of Middlesex locomotive which served as the first guideline when it came down to determining the ideas for the driving wheels which would be connected to the piston and cylinder through the connecting rod and piston rods. Other ideas were borrowed from another steam locomotive which served as the guideline for the boiler and cab. There pictures and dimensions are shown below.

Some important concepts that I greatly learned in this process included how to install new planes into my drawings so that I can build certain parts of the boiler such as the funnel and the dome. Another important concept I learned entails learning how to extrude out a new part of the frame of the locomotive. What Solidworks has really done for me in this project was when it came down to mating my parts together, and when some concentric mates were not available due to how far they were spaced apart, it taught me to go back at the very basis of all of my drawings, see what I had wrong, and be able to make new dimensions necessary for the mates. A lasting part that has made me gain a true of understanding in Solidworks is whenever I encountered an error that prohibited me from doing any more work on the project, I can simply go back to the original part, fix it there, and come back to rebuild the assembly.

A way in which this project relates to my interests is that since I am currently studying to be a Chemical Engineer, I can use the concept of pressure, heat, systems, and laws of motion to help give me a guideline for whatever comes ahead in the future.