Greetings from Team SolarMobil!
“Difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations.”
After a grueling and demanding period of about 5-6 weeks, we are proud to announce the completion of the chassis for Project 3.
Chassis is a very crucial part of the whole car. It is like a support system to the whole car. If the chassis design is not accurate, all the components of the car which are to be fitted into the frame will not mesh together and will result in poor performance of the vehicle.
Accuracy is the key
Mechanical head, Avaneesh Upadhyaya, speaking on the behalf of the manufacturing team says, “Accuracy is the most important factor in manufacturing. If the chassis is not accurate, all the components which are to be fitted will not mesh and will result in poor performance of the vehicle”. He further adds ”Overall, the entire chassis needs to be highly accurate, but special care is taken for the suspension box. This is done so because if the suspension points are misplaced, the entire stability of the car goes for a toss. The forces act in a haphazard manner and it results in weakening of the chassis.”
Hurdles are meant to be overcome
According to most of the team members, biggest problem encountered during the manufacturing process includes the lack of high precision jigs and fixtures for profiling of members and A-arms. The jigs and fixtures as per our designs are member specific making their procurement quite difficult.
The team managed by using makeshift jigs and multiple point referencing with respect to a local coordinate system and a global coordinate system. This course of action proved to be challenging and led to a delay in manufacturing process but in the end we were able to achieve a satisfactory level of accuracy in profiling of the members.
“I’m happy with the progress and the work being done by the technical team. Yes it is true that we have lost a few days, but any delay that we incurred was due to more external factors than internal” says Team Manager, Goheth Siddanth.
Exhilarating Experience
“Every Day in the workshop was like a theater play, we fought, we laughed, we played ,but we continued working no matter what. At the end of each day when the team left the workshop, they did with a stronger vision and a better understanding.” says Goheth. The relentless work and endless frustration incorporated a sense of responsibility, teamwork and team coordination among the team members.
“This wasn’t the first time that some of us (seniors) are working on a chassis of a car. But this was the first time we had the responsibility to ensure it was perfect and the feeling is nothing like it. It is a very thrilling experience.” asserts Pranav Gadamsetty, Transmission Head.
The team acknowledges the essential skill set they developed such as, on technical front, profiling and welding of tubes, drilling and grinding of metal and better understanding of various software.
TEAM SENIORS
The Road Ahead
The next step for structures subsystem is to fit the glass fiber bodywork onto the chassis with proper aesthetics and ensure minimum difference between the coefficient of drag obtained and the one which we estimated for analysis purpose. In vehicle dynamics subsystem, with the suspension box completed and the A-arms manufactured and painted they start with the placement procedure of the Arms onto the suspension box. The transmission components is to be mounted onto the chassis and tested.
We have already received motor controller, wiring components, vehicle dynamic and transmission parts, DAQ (Data Acquisition) components for the car and the work on them has begun.Procurement of other essentials such as motors, solar panels and battery and battery pack is in process and most of it will be obtained within the upcoming month.
The team will resume work in the first week of August. The upcoming month will be dedicated towards the completion of bodywork and assembly of the car. The month after that will be dedicated to testing.
Once again we would like to thank our sponsors for all their support and belief in our cause.
SolarMobil Manipal 