Week Four - the Fire Wall!

Hey guys!  So this week was a bit busier than weeks previous.  We're getting close to when the car needs to be complete, and there's a lot of work left to be done.  Rather than summarize what I did this week, like I've done in past blogs, I'm going to show what I did yesterday, step by step, from the time I got there to the time I left.

The goal: to design and create a fire wall.  Simply put, the fire wall is a sheet of metal behind the seat that protects the driver from both the heat of the engine, and (worst case scenario) any catastrophic malfunction.  This picture is of the fire wall on last year's car, nicknamed "Gold."  It's the large black piece with the ASU decals.

Step one: We measured the back of the car, where the fire wall was going to go.  We sketched it out on paper first to record the dimensions.  Unfortunately, it slipped my mind to take pictures of my sketches.

Step two: We began measuring and drawing out our sketch on a large piece of cardboard.  As opposed to last year, the team wanted a two-part fire wall, with some overlap, so we cut out upper and lower sections.

Step three: After making sure the cardboard pieces fit in the car correctly, we were ready to transfer the design to the actual metal.  We used a 12ft X 4ft piece of sheet aluminum.  In this picture, it's covered in protective plastic.  The blue circles indicate where the metal was creased and/or dented, so we avoided those areas as much as possible.



The actual metal looks like this:

Step Four: we cut out a large rectangle that was 34" X 48" so we didn't have to move around the entire 12' sheet every time we made a cut.  To make this and all subsequent cuts, we used the shear.  I would've had a video of it cutting, but I wasn't able to get a good angle that actually showed anything happening.  Here is a picture of the machine:

Step Five: After cutting the sheet down to a workable size, we traced out the cardboard pieces onto the metal.  We gave them an extra 1/2" on one side, and an extra 3/4" on the other, because the cardboard was slightly too small on the car.  Then, we put them in the shear and cut them out.  When all the big cuts were done, and the plastic was removed, we ended up with this:

Step Six: Note the small blue marks on the metal.  These indicate where parts of the chassis were, and where we needed to remove some material in order to make the wall fit, not unlike the grooves in a puzzle piece.  Robert was in charge of rounding out these areas, as the shear can only cut straight lines.  He used a Dremel tool, and made curves for all the paneling that the other members were making as well.

Step Seven: After every small cut, we took the piece back to test-fit it in the car.  The last thing we wanted was to cut too much and have to redo the entire wall.  Here is a picture of the bottom section, once we got it to fit properly:

The top section was much bigger, and it had four curved areas, rather than just two (like the bottom), so it took much longer to cut perfectly.  After all the back-and-forth between the car and the Dremel, we had almost finished...

Then the tool broke.

The tool should be a circle, not the weird, fan-shaped fragment that you see here.  Fortunately, the heads break often, so they're sold in packs of 20.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the first one we'd broken, but it was the last replacement one we had.  That put a halt to the entire fire wall build, but once we get more, we'll be able to finish it, along with the rest of the paneling.  

And there you have it!  I was from ASU at 9:45 to 4:45 yesterday.  I started the fire wall 10 am, and the last Dremel head broke at 4:44.  I hope to share more all-day projects with you, as I enjoy having a big task to start and see through all the way to completion.

Until next week!