My Raptor Vanity Page |
So what is this all about? This is my (really crappy) tribute to the #1 Inverted Roller Coaster in the world, Raptor. For several months in 2002, (As well as some time in 2001),I was lucky enough to be a part of the crew for this wonderful machine . This ride is my baby. Why the hell do I call it my baby? Well, you work at Cedar Point long enough and you develop an attachment to a ride that you worked at or if you're a Season Passholder, one that you ride a lot. So this ride is my baby. I know enough useless information to fill a small book, but here's some of the things I know and can actually tell. Some basic Raptor Facts: -Located at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio -Opened in 1994 -Cost $11.5 Million -Designed by Bolliger and Mabillard, Monthey Switzerland Out of the Station you'll drop seven feet, then climb up 137 only to drop down 119 feet at a 45 degree angle. At the bottom of the first drop Raptor reaches a speed of 57 mph and then flips upside down 6 times along 3,790 feet of track. The ride lasts 2:32. Ok, enough with the basic information. The entire ride is divided into 108 track pieces which are held up by 103 different support structures. There's 228 steps on the lift, which is angled at 27 degrees. There's 20 bolts for each track joint, and 34-36 bolts for each track to support joint. There's at least 4 different radii of supports that I can tell. The joint on those vary from 14 to 22 bolts. There's 460 Anchor bolts holding the supports to the concrete footers which go as deep at 15 feet. (Or so I'm told as far as depth is concerned) I figure there' somewhere around 25,400 nuts and bolts on the ride structure itself, with the trains adding another 4,000. Each one of those trains has 32 seats. Each harness has 8 possible latching positions. If you were to do the math with the number of seats and ride time, you'd figure out that our hourly capacity would be about 1800 pph. That is theoretical, of course. There's always those people that just don't quite understand the sense of urgency. Even with the slow folks, it was still pretty easy to hit our dispatch interval. For those of you not in 'the know,' a dispatch interval is the time it should take to unload, load, and dispatch a train. Hit your intervals, you capacity stays high. That was always a big deal for us. For the past few years, including this year, Cedar Point has been voted the best Capacity Amusement Park in the world. The control system was designed by Consign AG. They've done every B&M coaster for quite some time.. There's 2 Allen Bradley PLC's, with what I guess to be ICOM software running on the diagnostic computer as well as the error program that was developed by Consign. There's about 100 sensors, 50 motors and 19 brake units?? There's two PLC's for safety reasons. If there's a discrepency between them about an input, the computer won't let any more trains be dispatched. One interesting fact that most people don't know is that there's a pair of sensors at the entrance to the station that checks to see that both chain dogs and the four antirollback dogs are up. If one isn't up, the computer won't let the train be dispatched. Could the trains crash if there was to be a loss of air pressure? No. The brakes are normally closed and require air to open, so a loss of air would merely close all the brakes. Same thing if there was to be a loss of power. How'd I learn all this? Well, most of it you just learn from working the ride. It would breakdown on occasion and our maintenance guys were usually willing to answer my questions. Some of the more obscure stuff I figured out on my own. The more I discovered about the ride, the more I respected all the work that went into making it. The control system is something else. The first time you see one of those cabinets open and see the mass of wires there is, you'll be floored. Raptor's cabinets have nothing on those of Wicked Twister. There's some serious stuff in there. Every LIM on that ride has a cable that goes into the control room and onto a stator panel. Check out some of the construction photos on the official Cedar Point website to get an idea. But since I'm more of a structures geek, I love figuring out why the supports on Raptor were done the way they are. I've got every track support drawn out and currently being done in AutoCAD, ready for me to put some of my Structural Analysis skills to work. I was the go-to guy this summer when a guest has a tough question. Some guy asked me how much it all weighed. I told him about 9 million pounds. It's almost kinda scary the amount of stuff I know. Say you wanted to know the angle of the K-braces under the Transfer Bay supports, I could tell you. It's 67. Really. Wanna know how much faster she'd run at night if it's been about 75 all day? That's 2-3 seconds faster. Here's some more useless crap: -Almost all of the supports under compression have 4 Anchor Bolts. The only exception are the supports leading into and out of the vertical loop. -The supports under tension have anywhere from 4 to 10 Anchor Bolts. The ones that have 10 are the ones leading into and out of the Block Brake. Most of the helix supports have 8. -Not all of the track-to-support connections have 36 bolts, like I said earlier. Some of the track pieces on tight curves don't have two bolts on the upper part of the connection plate under compression. Why was this done? Money. There's no need for those extra bolts. -Someday soon I hope to know what the factor of safety is for this ride. If it's anything like the Aerospace industries', it's about 1.25. Somehow, I'm guessing it's closer to 2. -If I had to take a guess as to how much ladder logic is used in the PLC program, I'd guess there'd be at least one page for every ft. Raptor is high. |