Cal Poly Steel Bridge

We’ll we have been working 4 to 5 days a week for the past two months machining connections, notching tubing, cutting pipes, and designing a jig for fabrication.  I’m happy to say that all our hard work has paid off with our connections and we only have a couple more days.  Our jigs turned out amazing and are really going to make welding everything together much easier.  We welded up two sections last week to make sure everything is going to work and it worked out perfectly.  We are all really excited that our work is paying off and can’t wait to see the final product.

We finally have the website working again.  So lots of things have been going on for  our team over the past month.  We finished the design the first week of October and well be picking up the steel next week with fabrication to start after that.  We have been working on machining some new connections and are looking to test them next week.  We are way ahead of schedule compared to previous years so hopefully we can keep that momentum going.

Lucas Hoffmann

All four senior captains are finally all back in San Luis and have begun coming up with some design ideas for this years bridge.  Were starting off simple by analyzing different undertruss designs and then will move on to the decking.  The four of us are working hard and coming up with some good designs.

The new rules for 2011 came out about 2 weeks ago and they’ve gone and made a few big changes.  This years bridge has a 5 to 7 foot cantilever on one end, all members have to fit in a 6″ X 4″ X 3′ box (which is 2 inches smaller than last year), and no more fancy flanges because only two members can be connected by one bolt.

All this should make things a little more complicated this year.

For complete list of the rules, click here.

Please check out the pictures page to see pictures from the 2010 team, which placed 12th overall at the national competition.

Our website has been inaccessible for the past day or two because we were fixing some minor issues. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please check back for updates about the 2011 Cal Poly Steel Bridge Team!