23 Days and Counting...

23 days until our deadline to have the car assembled. Everyone on the team is kicking it into high gear to make it happen putting in lots of hours every day of the week. A quick update on recent activity Brian Blocher finished the rear uprights (knuckles) for wheel assembly this morning, Kyle Spivey is melting the wax out of the carbon fiber intake right now, Ryan Zeiset is working on getting the frame all welded, and Jon Pyles is working on the foam inserts (provided by Ohio Willow Wood) for the carbon fiber rims.

Brian's rear upright in the CNC

Finished side one. Now for the other side...

Almost finished with side 2

 

The final product

Kyle's intake before applying the resin

 

During layup

The current welded frame

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Wheel Hubs

Dustin Winchester's wheel hubs came in today! Thanks to our good friends at Manchester Tool and Die we were able to get them quick and even got them heat treated. One step closer to a finished car...

- Wes Muntz

All four on display

Side view of a rear hub

 Hub with the top hat piece

From the top

Super Update!

Like I said via twitter, sorry for not posting last night as I promised but I'm making it up to you with lots of pictures of the progress we have been making.

- Wes

I know you've been seeing a lot of the top hats but I promise it's Ben's last one.

Ben so excited to be wrapping up his work on the CNC mill

The beast that has been working non stop lately

With the frame in from Cartesian Tube Profiling, Ryan Zeiset went right to work assembling the frame so that it will be ready to be welding this weekend

Front view of the setup

Sideview

One of the many joint to be welded

A view from the inside of the frame

The intricacies of the frame

Last shot of the frame

Kyle's intake mold is ready for a carbon fiber sleeve

A big thanks to Wayne for making us some new welding tables and offering us welding classes!

The dyno

From the other (more confusing looking) side

New Website

Jackets Racing has upgraded from a blog to a real website!

Go check it out: http://fsae.cedarville.edu/

Brakes and Top Hats

January 15, 2010

Ben Beall made some great progress yesterday on the top hats for the braking system. He was up late into the night on the CNC.

Starting the top hat

Close up of the top hat

Ben Beall showing off his masterpieces

Close up of two of the four top hats

Frame and Carbon Fiber Rims

The frame is in and Jon's making good progress on the carbon fiber rims.

 The New Frame Cut by Cartesian Tube Profiling

Twitter and Frame

The Jackets Racing team is now on twitter! Check us out at http://twitter.com/jacketsracing

We also want everyone to know that our frame back from Cartesian Tube Profiling (www.cartesiantube.com) and is ready to be assembled! The manufacturing phase is underway.

- Wes Muntz

Design Phase Completed

With a lot of hard work and determination the team has completed the assembly of the car in Solidworks and is entering into the manufacturing stage. There has been a lot of blood, sweat and tears put into the project so far, well, maybe not any tears. We are continuing to work hard even after classes have ended and finals are finished. Work will continue over most of the break to achieve our goal of having the car constructed and running by March 1. We found the design phase to be challenging and rewarding, we expect the manufacturing phase to be no different.

Drivetrain Team Update - Knuckles

The drivetrain team set out with many challenges and goals this year. The designing of the knuckles were done from scratch due to re-designing of the suspension system. This was a challenging but fun task. It required working closely with the suspension, brake and hub design team members. The design went through many iterations until the final design was reached. Finite Element Analysis was performed on the knuckles using Algor. The factor of safety of the front knuckle is 2.6 and weighs approximately 2.4 pounds.

Front Knuckle Design

Rear Knuckle Design

Front Knuckle, Hub, and Brake Assembly

- Brian Blocher

Brakes

The design of the rotors was not a quick or easy job. There were many factors that had to be looked into for the design such as the weight of the car that the brakes needed to stop, the size of the wheels that the rotors were to be packaged in, the manufacturability of the assembly, the size of the calipers, and the hydraulic pressure in the lines required to lock all the wheels just to name a few. We went through multiple iterartions to finalize the design we have now. The final design includes four outboard disc brakes and incorporates the use of a top hat with a floating rotor. They are shown in the figures below.

- Ben Beall

Front Rotor

Top Hat

The rotors float on the top hat through the use of the floating rotor buttons. These buttons are wider than the thickness of the rotor and top hat, so the rotors can shift a few hundredths of an inch on the top hat in order to stay centered in the calipers. Once we designed everything that we wanted for the disc brakes, we put them together in an assembly in SolidWorks.

Rear Brake Assembly

Once we had created an assembly, we were able to put the model into ALGOR to simulate the stresses the rotor would see. This allowed us find the factor of safety for the disc brake and make design changes based off how big or small the safety factor was.

Model of Rear Floating Rotor Assembly in ALGOR