Week 7

Hi everyone,

This week, most of the interns got lots of solo experience with different parts of the car. I worked almost entirely on making 5 gram to 50 gram (5g interval) brass weights to counter balance the continuously variable transmission. Making the weights took up a lot of time because they needed to be centered and lathed down so that the center of mass will sit correctly and the actually weight of the brass was hard to judge without remeasuring each weight every couple of lathe passes. This week, I couldn't make it to ASU this Saturday, and to compensate for the time not spent in the labs, I worked on more Solidworks tutorials (one of the best ones I found was learning how to use the design library to save parts for new projects) and have begun sketching out a 3D draft of the car for my model in the program. It has been a very slow and meticulous process, but I'm staring to get the hang of controlling the program and the little quirks of the tools. This draft was to basically experiment without a tutorial and get a feel for designing the chassis without exact numbers for the time being. Once this draft is completed, I will probably need to either redefine all lengths and values on this model or I will start from scratch with a new one (though making the second model will be easier and faster than the first one was).

  



 

Thanks for stopping by and come again next week!

Week 6

Hi everyone!

 This week the team was mostly focused on dissembling the old car (after we fixed it up for a meeting with a General Motors representative) and putting the new car back to together so I didn't get to make too many new parts or get many cool pictures since most of this week was transferring parts. However, this year's car is almost finished enough to enter strength and endurance testing.

(cut some pipes to strengthen the top of the chassis)
 
(faced, drilled and used the auto lathe for the first time to make more COM Cups (and found out what their purpose is, used to hold bearings in the suspension bars))

     
(transferred over the suspension and gearbox with axles to the new car)
 

(Bad photo, but this is me taking off the bolts to the engine so we can put it on the new car)

(Took off the old accelerator so we could its cable on the new car)

 
(Cut and lathed down some pipe for the brake pedal to rotate on.)

Week 5

Hi everyone!

This week ASU was on spring break meaning that I got to spend even more time in the labs.

On Tuesday, I worked with the chief engineer to finish a centering piece for the brake calipers so we could finish centering the drill for the outlet holes that still needed to be drilled. After finding the center of the brake calipers we used a CAD program (computer aided design) to find the exact coordinates of where the drill was supposed to enter. Afterwards I went the team's electrical lead and got a tutorial on coding and arduinos.

 

  

 

 

On Thursday,  I had to remake the body panel that made last week because it got super bent and dented. Afterwards, Jack and I took off the old skid-plate so that it could be used to mark off where  tabs could be welded onto the new chassis to hold the skid-plate in place. then we sandblasted the tabs before they got welded in place to get rid of the rust from being cut out on the plasma cutter. Lastly, I finished off the day by added some chamfers to the drilled brake calipers so that the bolts would sit better.

 

  

On Saturday, the team and I found out that the plastic parts used on our suspension system were melted and had not been removed when the tabs were welded to the chassis. All these plastic pieces had to be remade on the lathe. This took most of the day because the measurements had to be super precise and we did make a couple errors and had to remake the pieces. Afterwards, I finished off the day by cutting some steel pipe on the horizontal band saw to make COM Cups.

  

 

 

Week 4

Hi guys,

This week the team put a lot of emphasis on the brake systems and making the body panels.
On tuesday I made a bushing for the for the break pedal (its a little cylinder that the break pedal sits on and creates an axis for the pedal to rotate on) and drilled holes into the brake pedal because the bushing was just a bit to big. To make the bushing I had to use the horizontal bandsaw to cut the pipe and the lathe to fine tune the the bushing to about four digits. Afterwards I realized that the plasma cut holes in pieces for the pedal were just a bit too small and that I had to use the milling machine again to make them larger. The team also finished getting last year's Baja car working again so we could test some of more of this year's parts.

On Thursday I spent most of the time setting up a jig to drill a hole into brake calibers on the milling machine. The hard part about it was the calibers jut out at 45 degree angle to the calibers and needed to be set up so the milling drill could come down on the caliber. To achieve this angle I had to use gauge blocks (super smooth blocks that stick together when rubbed against each other used for precision measurements) and propped up the caliber to the desired height and angle. However I couldn't actually drill the holes because some of the college freshman messed up a centering tool that I needed to drill the holes accurately.






Finally on Saturday, The whole day I spent sheering, shaping and filing body panels.
I started making the front and triangle panels while learning how to use the sheering machine.



All the panels that go on the car need to filed down and there shouldn't be sharp points. After dremeling and filing the edges, moved onto a larger side panel as well as finishing the firewall paneling that the other interns were working on.  





In addition to all the work I did while at ASU, I also have been watching Solidworks tutorials and designing some basic pieces to practice using the tools in the program. Some of the tools I used for these two parts (not actual parts on the car but just for practice) were extruding, cutting, and mirroring tools.