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
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