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.
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