Week Six

Hey all!  So I called last week's blog "almost there," and that's still an appropriate title this week.  The car isn't driving yet, but it's darn close.  This week, I helped take the gear box out of Gold and put it into the new car. That may sound easy, but it took several hours.  Why?  We had to remove all of the wheel arms and suspension from both back wheels in order to remove the gear box.  After it was on the new car,we had to reattach everything, which is when we realized that the new car had the wrong wheel.  The back right wheel had no splines, meaning that the gear box shaft wouldn't fit.  Finally, the whole system had been installed, and the big push began.

Yesterday was all about divide and conquer.  We had some members working on paneling, some finishing the brakes, while others worked on the code for the E-CVT.  My job was classic engineering: take a problem, design a solution, and fabricate it.

The problem of the day was making an adjustable steering column to accommodate different drivers. We also wanted to gain points for the ergonomics section of the competition.  My design was great, I had a sketch and a crystal clear idea of the end result in my head.  The execution is where it fell apart a bit,which is why I have no pictures of the build (yet).  I overlooked the need to use a pilot drill when milling a pipe, that is to say, I went right to the drill bit I wanted without first starting the hole.  The pilot drill is designed to keep the hole in the center of the pipe, rather than slipping to one side.

When I was done, I had a pipe with holes perfectly spaced apart, but not even close to a straight line.

I also had a pin to design and make, to hold the steering wheel at whatever height is needed. I found a perfect piece of metal (after a disastrous attempt to make one in a lathe, leading to a bent cylinder twice the ideal diameter), and I drilled a hole into it to hold the pin onto the car.  My main mistake was trying to make a small plastic end to hold when moving the pin.  The piece came out nicely, but I had nothing to secure it onto the metal pin (I thought we had epoxy when I made it).  After realizing plastic wouldn't work, I tried to attach a small metal ring to the end, as I had seen on some other pins in the tool room.  Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to drill another hole in the pin.  I just have gotten lucky the first time, because the drill bit kept slipping, and the pin was far too small to use a pilot.

So what was the end result?  5+ hours later, I had a great design, and no usable parts.  But, silver lining, when I go in on Tuesday, I'm going to try again with the team member whose idea it was in the first place, and hopefully together we'll be more successful.

However, I got a taste of true engineering, from beginning to end, and I'm excited to give it another attempt!

Until next week!