Week 7: Finishing the Car's Assembly

Greetings once again,

This week's objective was to get the new car up and running, which was a goal that had been originally due by March 15, but due to a number of unforeseen technical difficulties was delayed until just this past Saturday. Considering the new car was only a frame when I first began my internship, it has been exciting to seen the finished product come to fruition in just a few short weeks. With that having been said, without further ado, let's get in to what I was up to this week.

On Tuesday, I was assigned the construction of the foot box, the piece of metal that goes underneath the brake and gas pedals and provides a rest when either foot is disengaged from its pedal. I used Gold's foot box as a model for the current one, but took a few additional considerations when attempting to replicate it. First, it was requested that I use a thicker grade of sheet metal for this car's foot box, as a problem with the previous car's was that it became dented with repetitive use. In addition, the slightly different frame necessitated slight measurement changes that had to be incorporated into the dimensions of the new foot box. When all was done, I gave the flat foot box metal to a team member so that it could be bent at precise angles using off-site equipment. Since I did not know how much room to leave between the foremost edge of the foot box and the front panel of the car, when I came in on Thursday, I learned that I overestimated it by about an inch and had to cut it down once again. Thankfully, by leaving myself a little extra margin, there was room for error in case the piece happened to be the wrong length. Also that day, I took off the uprights from Gold and put them on the new car so that we could get it up and running. I then fabricated some brass weights for the mechanical CVT.

On Thursday, I helped Louis, the chassis lead, weld on the tabs to the car for the paneling and gas tank cover, which turned out to be quite challenging as the tabs were very thin and it was easy to burn right through them. We ended up cannibalizing the better, thicker tabs from the "test chassis." I also took off various parts from that car and grinded the welds off them. Finally, I deconstructed Gold and organized the parts to be used as spares when the team goes to competition.

On Saturday, first I found the percent difference in weight between the stainless steel uprights and brackets and their cast iron counterparts, which weighed significantly less, it turns out. Then, I helped Stephen screw the flex line for the brake's into the T cross with plumber's tape and generally replaced the old flex line with the new. There were a variety of hobshobble, miscellaneous tasks that I partook in that day as well, but they were so small and insignificant I won't bother mentioning them. For my final act of the day, I helped precisely measure and model the panels on the car for the purposes of designing the vinyl decals that will go on them. Late that night I finally witnessed the car in its (almost) final form, and was amazed at how quickly things had come together.

Like always, thanks for reading,

Max

Week 6: I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Greetings,

This week at Baja the team was working hard to get the car up and running by Saturday the 18th and finish the design reports. On an unrelated note, I got a half-inch metal shard stuck in my index finger. All in all a pretty normal week at Baja.

On Tuesday, I spent the entire day working on just one part (or multiple copies of the same part): the comcups. The comcups hold the uprights into the com bearing, and have to be precisely cut so that there is no play between the two elements. I started by taking the base material, a narrow pipe cut into cylindrical slices by another intern, and first filed down the edges to remove any burrs that would cause the part to not seat properly in the collet on the manual lathe. Next, I moved over to the manual lathe to bore a wider hole than the pipe already provided, and then faced one side down so that it would sit nicely in the CNC lathe. Then, naturally, I transitioned over to the CNC room to have a computer execute cuts at an angle that no human could cut on a manual lathe. During this process the front side was cut down to length and then chamfered. 

On Thursday, I continued the work of Tuesday, and completed all 23 comcups by CNC lathing the reverse face of the cup, thus finalizing the overall length and providing a smooth inner "ledge" for the com bearing to sit on. Also that day, I helped take the wheels off of the gold car, and attended the weekly Baja meeting, where we discussed designs & colors for the car and potential sponsorship. Many members were not in attendance because they were finishing the cost reports that were due that day.

And on Saturday, by directive from Nick, we attempted to bring this year's car to fully functional status. We did this by cannibalizing many parts from Gold, and overlooking some superfluous features, like the back brakes (which are largely redundant with the front brakes but important for obstacle courses and off-road conditions). It was my responsibility to put on the brake calipers for the car; at that junction I learned that it was impossible to attach the back brakes on account of a flaw in the design which caused the brakes to spatially overlap part of the transmission. I also rethreaded aforementioned brake calipers to the requisite 1/4" 28 thread specification, as the current threading did not go all the way through. My last act of the night was taking the throttle and brake lines out of Gold to be used in the new car. Sadly, we did not get the car up and running as we had hoped.

If you've remained interested up until this point, thank you for reading my blog and I hope I have informed you a little about the intricacies of building a car. These posts will in all likelihood get shorter as I am afforded more single, monolithic tasks to preoccupy the majority of my day. It may make for less interesting reading, but just know that it is more materially helpful to the club when economies of scale are utilized and everyone is doing a set function.

Tune in next week for more,

Max

Week 5: I Remember Nothing

Hello,

Another week, another... I don't know, car? Anyway, it's that time of week again when I post my update on the comings and goings of Sun Devil Racing, and it must have been an especially exhausting week, since I can't seem to recollect much at all from what happened. Fortunately, I took notes, and like the movie Memento, will use those to reconstruct what transpired in the grimy den of the Sim Building.

On Tuesday, the electrical lead instructed me on how Arduinos worked, how to use a stepper motor, and on the operation of the linear potentiometer and Hall Effect sensor present in the vehicle. He also introduced me to Arduino coding, and gave me a crash course in C++ as it relates to that specific microcontroller. I am already familiar with the language, so picking up the ropes wasn't the hardest thing to muster.

In an out-of-the-ordinary kind of way, I came in on Wednesday to collaborate with a fellow intern (Alan) whom I don't normally see in the lab, as our "shifts" hardly ever overlap. I spent the day CNCing a part, fabricating the hub caps on the manual lathe, and helping around in other small jobs here and there.

Thursday, I helped craft a specially designed parts list for the purposes of documenting the construction of this year's car for future Polytechnic Baja teams. By the end of the endeavor, every part of the car had been scrutinized for material content and construction technique. After that, I was taught how to use SolidWorks, 3D modeling software for solid mechanical parts, so that I could begin to design some of the parts on the car.

Saturday, I spent the whole day in the manual lab (9 hours) fabricating plastic buffers for the joint that holds the uprights. The difficulty in the task arose more from the quantity of pieces we had to produce and less from the actual fabrication.

That's all for now, readers.

Thanks,
Max

Week 4: Making Progress

Hi all,

Another week in the Sim Building working on Baja. A sizable amount of progress was made on the car this week, I would say, if only for the lull in the clerical work that followed the successful completion of the cost reports. I met a couple new faces as well, which surprised me a great deal considering that I've worked with nearly everyone in the club on some occasion and thought that I had seen the entire roster of Baja members just by attending the weekly general club meeting (and the leads meeting, which Nick (the club president) graciously lets us sit in on).

When I came in Tuesday, March 2, Nick and Coleman were still busy getting the cost report submitted, so I spent some time with a few members here and there that needed a hand with their individual contributions to the car. Coleman, when he had reached a hiatus in his personal work, gave us a mock-up for a hub cap and told us to fabricate x4 of them with the manual. This was the first time I had just been given a mock-up and directed to produce a physical copy from the paper description; all times prior I had been given comprehensive verbal instructions and given the correct tool to mount onto the machine. Later, the brakes lead instructed us to mill a part for the brake spatula. It was very satisfying seeing the parts we made welded into a cohesive unit. Early in the evening, when the garage was mostly empty, I observed the eCVT testing, which compromised mounting a GoPro to the chassis aimed at the transmission, and then driving it on the road to obtain footage of the eCVT working. Very cool.

Thursday, the other interns and I spent the whole day in the manual lab drilling holes in a brake component that needed to be bored precisely down the middle and at a 45 degree angle. The work required a lot of setup and double-checking, and took up a lot of time. So much so, in fact, that we were forced to miss the weekly Baja club meeting.

Also, I got whiff of a rumor that this year's Baja team was making a website to add formality to the club in the eyes of the sponsors, university, and other teams, and that they were looking for an intern to help out. As this is right up my alley, I hope that this is something I can become involved in.


That's all, folks.
Max