Showing off Formula SAE?

The jigging at each corner holds the suspension boxes in place, and we're very careful with heat. We take a LOT of measurements.

Nice to see a frame and cage with triangulation with compound tube joints built in.....

Why don't paint the large sections of the frame the color you desire and then nickle plate all the suspension control arms and other sub-assemblies that fit easily in the plating tank of whoever can do the work for you?

I wish I had known about FASE when I was in college. It would have been worth all the failing grades / expense to do that!

We might plate the control arms and things like that, haven't decided yet.

And yeah, this stuff has cause a few failed classes and bad grades in the past. Worth it, though.

Here are some pictures of the fully tacked chassis.

Did you get your tubes laser or water cut? Or did you hand cut them? I did quite a few hand fitting of tubes on Baja and man that was tedious. Im on formula now and we should be getting our cut tubes back soon.I think we had ours water jetted.

They're laser-cut. I'd tell you the company that did it but I'll have to ask the team if we want to give that info out and the company if they want additional work first.

The first FSAE car I worked on (Case Western IF05) was all hand-cut and that took months and months to get all 119 done. One thing you will want to do if you've got hand-fitting to do is to set your critical points early, cut those tubes first, jig them up, leave them there, and remeasure as necessary to make sure that they don't move as you weld others to them.

G&H Diversified out of Houston did our tube cutting. I know they do a few other teams as well.

unevolved wrote: The jigging at each corner holds the suspension boxes in place, and we're very careful with heat. We take a LOT of measurements.

But when your release the jigging doesn't it just TWANG! out?

unevolved wrote: Here are some pictures of the fully tacked chassis.

Alain Prost works on your chassis?

Our 120% scale Alain Prost designed the uprights and hubs along with some other suspension parts.

chaparral wrote: Our 120% scale Alain Prost designed the uprights and hubs along with some other suspension parts.

That makes sense. Prost was never known for his chassis fabrication.

In reply to carguy123:

After we're done with the full-circle welds we'll stress-relieve them and then unbolt them from the jigs.

What's your weight and where are you on cost?

How durable is the setup?

How is your portfolio coming?

Tell I have dealt with this a little bit?

In reply to mguar:

The suspension mount "boxes" were made from square tubing, as were a few others where having a flat bottom is useful. Our main and front roll hoops have to be round, and since we have laser cut tubing available it doesn't take that much longer to fabricate.

If we were on a small FSAE team and the approach was to "take a 2WD ATV, build a frame and a front suspension, make the engine not run horribly with the restrictor" there would be a lot more square tubes!

FlightService wrote: What's your weight and where are you on cost? How durable is the setup? How is your portfolio coming? Tell I have dealt with this a little bit?

Weight in the SolidWorks model is 283; the weight variance between model and car is a TAMU secret (Unevolved: You're project manager. You can overrule me on this. I don't want to give it away. It was the same number on '10 and '11 within a couple pounds) but is fairly constant and under 50 lbs.

'06, '09, and '11 all still run, give or take a day of preparation. I design around (and told others this year to shoot for) not-off-the-shelf parts lasting 100 hours of operation or so. If the difference between a 10 mm bearing that lasts 8 hours and a 12 mm bearing that lasts 100 hours is a quarter ounce, the bigger one will be used. If it's half a pound, we'll make the little tool to drive it out and replace it...

Portfolio is poking along. All the section teams know about it, and we have all the drawings and receipts anyway, so most of the cost report will be right there.

chaparral wrote:

FlightService wrote: What's your weight and where are you on cost? How durable is the setup? How is your portfolio coming? Tell I have dealt with this a little bit?

Weight in the SolidWorks model is 283; the weight variance between model and car is a TAMU secret (Unevolved: You're project manager. You can overrule me on this. I don't want to give it away. It was the same number on '10 and '11 within a couple pounds) but is fairly constant and under 50 lbs. '06, '09, and '11 all still run, give or take a day of preparation. I design around (and told others this year to shoot for) not-off-the-shelf parts lasting 100 hours of operation or so. If the difference between a 10 mm bearing that lasts 8 hours and a 12 mm bearing that lasts 100 hours is a quarter ounce, the bigger one will be used. If it's half a pound, we'll make the little tool to drive it out and replace it... Portfolio is poking along. All the section teams know about it, and we have all the drawings and receipts anyway, so most of the cost report will be right there.

Yep, I'll back that up. Given what we know at this point, my pessimistic estimation is 330lb with a half tank of gas and all other fluids. We've got a wager going for final weight, and my money is on a much lower value.

We have a person whose entire objective is cost report development, and we have a "representative" for cost report on each subteam.

So far, our setups have proven very durable. We run the cars fairly regularly, and with a few exceptions that have been remedied, we haven't had any failures. The suspension components are designed around 10^8 cycles (the stuff without fatigue strengths, that is) at a minimum.

We've been working on our design reports, the hardest part is going to be to condense each subteam to less than a page. We're all too proud of our stuff!

Any feedback, experienced or not, is welcome. That's why we're doing this thread.

Finished welding the chassis, now on to mounting tabs, etc.

Also wired up a Race Technology DASH2 into one of the older cars to facilitate its transition from "Formula Hybrid" to "Formula Test Mule."

Yeah there is a whole different competition for that, Formula Hybrid. Some pretty cool stuff happening there

mguar wrote: In reply to unevolved: Is anybody playing with hybrids yet? I mean the battery pack for one of those is 125 pounds and about the size of a big briefcase. The motor makes 80 horsepower which is enough to accelerate a 3600# car to 47 mph.. I'm just thinking out of the box here but the torque of an electric motor in a lite weight car might make for some extremely brisk acceleration. Look at how quick the teasler is.. or even better there is an electric motorcycle someplace on the internet that does the 1/4 mile in something like 8 seconds..

Yeah, we've done Formula Hybrid for the past three years, and it's not nearly competitive. We placed 1st, 2nd, and 1st without too much competition, so we're moving back to Formula SAE for the increased design challenge.

Yep. From B8.1.1- "The engine(s) used to power the car must be a piston engine(s) using a four-stroke primary heat cycle with a displacement not to exceed 610cc per cycle. Hybrid powertrains, such as those using electric motors running off of stored energy, are prohibited."

I'm not sure a properly-running FH would be faster than an "FSAE250" - when the weight goes down this far it seems like power matters less. TAMU's '11 FH car was faster at autox with the electric motor shut off.

Eh, I bet if it was properly set up it could be faster. I think the issues with '11 came down to driveability. Simple logic dictates that more power with same weight and handling will be faster, provided it's delivered in a linear, expected fashion.

Regardless, neither method would be as fast as a sub-610cc car. I think that'd be an interesting study, a Hybrid with a 600.

Working on some paint jobs... Here's one idea.