Week 3

Hello again,

Here's another weekly update on my progress in Baja. On Tuesday, I spent the day working at the manual fabricating the hubs for the car. This compromised the full five hours (3-8 p.m.) that I was there that day. The hubs later had to be put through further molding in the CNC lathe, work that was carried out by someone practiced with those (vastly more complicated) machines. In the course of my work, I learned how to use a tool I had never used before, and received training that I would not otherwise receive unless I was a student enrolled at ASU Polytechnic.

On Thursday, I helped remove the engine from the 2015-16 car, so-called "Gold" for its distinctive hue. The other previous years' cars we possess are "Red" and "Widow" (which is black). Gold is the vehicle we use to test the eCVT and gearbox, as well as the one we showed off to the public at Night of the Open Door. After the engine was removed, new holes were drilled into the engine mount to shift the center of gravity over. Here, I got to show off my physics knowledge briefly when I helped the CVT lead calculate how much the engine should be shifted over using the formula:

After that, I went to the club's weekly meeting and listened to all the items on the agenda. The biggest issue at this session was having the leads complete the expense reports in a timely manner. Since I had nothing better to do, I stayed late helping Stephen (the brakes lead) complete his expense report, as well as his cost presentation.

All in all, another fruitful week.

Thanks for reading,
Max

Day of the Open Door + New Developments

Hello readers,

Apologies for the belated post. The last few nights were increasingly hectic as the workload was gradually ramped-up in preparation for Night of the Open Door. Night of the Open Door, for those unfamiliar with the culture at ASU Polytechnic, is a designated day when all the clubs at Polytechnic showcase what they have been working on to impress onlookers and attract potential sponsors. But since quite a few workdays have passed since my last post, I will start off by mentioning what I else I have been doing aside from my preparation for Open Door.

For one, the other interns and I were introduced to TIG welding on Tuesday. Many of the club members spend time welding the different joints of the chassis together, so Coleman (the chief engineer) thought it would be an important skill for us to learn. Tungsten Inert Gas welding consists of aiming a tungsten electrode at the part you are looking to solder and, in our case, pressing down on the petal to cause the machine to arc and super-heat the aluminum. Once a small puddle of molten metal forms, you manually feed the aluminum filler rod into the pool to form the joint that will hold the two pieces together. The tungsten electrode must be refined to a point using a grinding wheel, a process that we also learned. In addition, we learned an alternative, more specialized form of welding in the campus laboratories, but I'll get to that later.

On Thursday, the shock absorbers were finally delivered, and I was tasked with attaching them between the uprights (specifically the upper control arm) and the frame. The shocks this year are unique because instead of the coil system used in previous years, this year's car features a compress-ed air damper. The advantages to an air system are that the elastic coefficient is not constant and increases under greater weight. The ride therefore feels less jolty when traversing rough terrain. Indeed, when I saw the vehicle glide over bowling ball sized crags in the Rock Garden during the Night of the Open Door, I was amazed at how stably the car was able to maneuver.

Friday was the long-awaited Night of the Open Door. The morning consisted of me putting on the panels on the car and attaching the skid-plate. In the afternoon, I helped greet incoming admirers as they came to examine the Mini Baja organization. The night also involved a lot of pushing previous years' cars around, which itself was rather exhausting. I had to leave for an hour in the middle of the event, which unfortunately led to me missing the break-down of the car mid test run. Apparently one of the uprights became deformed and tore off while the vehicle was being road-tested, leading to it "hovering" on three wheels for about 40 seconds before the driver realized it was broken. That led to an abrupt end to our live demonstration in front of an audience, which was too bad, since it was definitely the most action-packed and flashy spectacle in the entire Sim Building.

Saturday I also came in, marking my third day in a row helping out at Baja. It would have been a slower day, on account of there not being much to do following the heap of effort put in to make Open Door run smoothly, but one of the club members suggested we practice a different form of welding, MIG welding, which turned into an arduous task. MIG welding also uses a high-voltage machine to deliver ~60 amps of current to melt metal, but is used for welding steel instead of aluminum. It utilizes a wire-feeding gun that extends a line of steel for you, so one only has to concentrate on aiming the feeder. The gun also spits argon shielding gas to prevent the joint from atmospheric contamination. The argon gas tank became inoperative in the middle of our time there, and resulted in holey, splotchy patterns in the weld. Luckily we were able to get it to work before the day ended. Also that day, I myself was tasked with accessing the status of the communications equipment and determining if any new purchases needed to be made. I felt a little uncomfortable going through the walkies and other gear, because I didn't know at first what I was looking at and was given no initial guidance. After I realized that the person who was previously in charge of the communications equipment graduated, I ascertained that I was given so much autonomy because I was as good a person as any to rifle through the radio equipment. The only deficiency, which was told to me by the club president, was the push-to-talk button from last year that became dysfunctional and had to be thrown away.

I feel that this pas week was a success because I am slowly becoming more involved in the fabrication process and direct construction of the car. This week was an unusually high amount of work, I feel, because we were met with sharp, impersonal deadlines with which to cope.

Sorry for the long post, there was a lot I had to get out.

--Max

First Days of Internship

Hey y'all,

I'm on the heels of my first day of the Baja SAE internship with the team at ASU Polytechnic. So far, it has mostly been learning how to work the different machines, in preparation for when we can start to make proprietary parts for the car. The four other interns and I have been instructed in how to use the CNC machines, lathes, and manuals. In the future, we will learn to use the CAD program SolidWorks to begin modelling more complex structures on the computer.

The first day, I was humbled when it took me half an hour to screw the engine on to one of the test cars. In my defense, the washer I was given was the wrong size for the bolt, but it still took me an exorbitant amount of time to realize my error. My fingertips were raw and bleeding after trying to apply torque in hard-to-reach places. I also got to take the side panels off the test car to replace with newer ones, which proved much simpler than my previous task.

Most recently, I was present at the testing of the eCVT to be used on this year's car. Since I personally drive a Subaru Impreza 2015 that uses commercial eCVT technology in the transmission, I had an intuitive sense of how the car was supposed to handle. The team in charge of the gearbox and transmission are using Arduino microcontrollers to dynamically change the gear ratio between the primary and secondary sheaves, by using data reported from a Hall Effect sensor measuring engine RPM. This type of transmission is unique to the ASU Baja team and, in my opinion, the coolest aspect of the car.

There is plenty of work to be done to meet the March 30 assembly deadline. According to what I've heard, the primary obstacle to road-testing the car is the acquisition of the shock absorbers, which are one of the few parts being manufactured at a 3rd party facility. In fact, most of the parts for the car are made in-house with the equipment available to students at the ASU Polytechnic campus, which supposedly outshines other Polytechnic institutes for its plethora of fabrication tools.

Our next big event is the Open House on February 17, wherein middle and high school students and interested parties come to examine the car. The session is designed to be chiefly informative, and includes an event where young kids are taught how to make a rubber-band powered cardboard vehicle. However, many potential sponsors attend the outing, so all club members have to be at the top of their game in explaining the inner workings of the car and selling while they should donate to the cause. As an intern, my presence at the event will probably be peripheral, but the club president, Jason, made clear that this was an all-hands-on-deck type of event.

My busiest days will probably be ahead of me, so I will update this blog weekly with all the new stuff I am learning and getting involved in.

Until next time,
Max