Week 3: More lathing (latheing?) experience!

This week, we got much more experience using the manual lathe. On Tuesday, we prepped the cylinder shown in the picture below so that another automated machine could make finer cuts and create the hubs for the car. Our job was specifically to smooth out a side of the cylinder (the shiny section as shown in the picture below) by shaving off excess material, so that the second machine could grip it more accurately. This took around 4 hours.

(I believe this was Max's work.)

On Thursday, we spent about 90 minutes trying to unscrew the engine from last year's car in order to test a new system. (Don't judge. It's hard.) After that it was the team meeting, during which they discussed the incoming deadlines, especially the cost reports.

Week 2: I know how welding works!

Technically, I know how a lot of things work. Making it work is another story.

In addition to someone showing us how to weld, two big things happened this week. The first was that the cost reports for the car parts were due. Us interns took on the job of finding the parts used last year, and reporting the current price. It was fairly tedious, but whatever.

The second was a Open Night event, which apparently the entire Polytechnic campus is involved in. For the Baja team's presentation, we showed off the car (duh). We spent most of Thursday fixing up last year's car, installing the wheels, shocks, and other parts, because this year's car is still largely unfinished.

On Friday, I finally saw one of the cars in action, and it's quite impressive. At an intersection, there is a corner filled with rocks, and they drove it around. Despite the bumpiness, that car could still go really fast. (I know that is what an off-road car is supposed to do. I've just never seen anything like it before.)

Sadly, the car broke about two hours in. Apparently, what happened was that one of the tires slipped/went on a rock, forcing the tire off the legs (not sure if this is the right word). Normally, the outward pressure is simply supposed to turn the wheels in that direction to compensate, but this time, the driver had already turned the steering wheel to the max. Somehow, the driver managed to not notice that one of his wheels was hanging uselessly to the side for a good 5 seconds.

Next week (starting tomorrow), I'm looking forwards to going back to working on the car and hopefully learning more welding.

An Introduction

Hi. This is Alan. I'm interning at ASU, working for their Baja SAE team. As an AP Research student, I won't be doing a research project in conjunction, so I guess this blog will simply detail what I did, learned, etc.

Some basic information: The Baja SAE competition is a intercollegiate design competition requiring students to build an off-road car that can race for about 4 hours in rough terrain. All cars are given the same engine (for obvious reasons. Otherwise this would mostly be a big engine+reasonable durability competition.) Everything else, from design to manufacturing, is done by the students. The first competitions are April 27-30, and since the project leader wants 30 days of testing, we have to finish the car by the end of March. 
http://students.sae.org/cds/bajasae/about/

My job is to help the ASU people, so that they get stuff done faster. My guess is that I'll spend the next week or two (or three) learning how to use the machines, as well as other skills. Once I learn these skills, they said they'll just assign me tasks, so that I can basically come in whenever I want and know what to do. 

So far, I've been onsite three times. The first was just an introductory meeting, but in the last two, they've showed us how to use two of the many machines (the technical term is "lathe," which according to Google, refers to "a machine for shaping wood, metal, or other material by means of a rotating drive that turns the piece being worked on against changeable cutting tools.") The first one lets me shave off/flatten excess material off of a flat surface in order to meet height restrictions. The second is used to carve objects with rotational symmetry. (In the future, I'll try to take pictures.) It's quite neat how the machines work.

Well, I guess that about covers it. Bye.