Starting the Assembly Line

One of the greatest advantages that our team has in the final construction of Cyclodrome is an abundance of labor. We have a very large team (15 people) compared to the scope of our project, and so can keep a very large amount of work going at once. This makes working to our maximum potential a continuous challenge - in the hectic atmosphere of a busy shop in which materials are constantly in motion, it's difficult to keep 15 pairs of hands productive at once. To help solve this problem, we've formed groups to keep clear which students are doing which tasks. Groups regularly change depending on whether the day's work is triangular supports or track, and we aim to have each student do every job at least once.

In today's construction of triangular supports, the first group measured and cut the horizontal and upright members of each element.

The second group linked together the horizontal and vertical members with corner base plates.

After measuring the resulting angle, the third group measured and cut the angled members of each triangle to fit snugly into the complete element.

A fourth group cut and placed plates to hold the complete triangle in place. These edge plates are made of larger pieces of wood to provide greater strength at points of extreme stress.

Finally, all completed frame pieces were fitted into their places in the King Pavilion. With our organized process, we were able to build enough frame for one quadrant of the Cyclodrome in only three hours! With progress like this, we look forward to completing the rest in the coming weeks.