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
No comments:
Post a Comment