Picture update

I thought I would add some pictures of the work we have been up to. I'm avoiding the shop while the EEs works on the car and make it beep constantly.


EES doing some final testing on the car before the road trip

















Tim the Beaver with solar car making tools. Razor blades are the best tools for everything from cutting holes in Kevlar layups to applying epoxy. The wall behind him has some testing samples of composites methods we use on the car.

















Video of our canopy hinge working. It's made with a four bar linkage that results in upward lift before turning to make the canopy clear the roll bar.



FEA of the spindle. The main point of all the testing is to find out what breaks before the race. The spindle shown was bent during some initial testing on a track. Nothing else was damaged including the driver. The wrong alloy and heat treatment was ordered on this bent spindle, which has been fixed. It was fairly amusing how perfectly the FEA and real deformation matched.

















Applying the solar array. After encapsulating our solar cells, we applied them to the array using silicone adhesive. The sand bags are to keep everything flat while the silicone cure. We did this process at night to avoid bothering everyone in the building with the smell of vinegar, which silicone release while it cures.