Archive for the ‘Electrical’ Category

Inside Nature's Geeks: the Electrical Engineer

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Time to Zero Hour: 2 weeks

Panic Level: 100-125 bpm

This week, CUER SunSpot takes you on a rather dull extremely fascinating journey inside the world of electrical and information engineering - a world where phases, magnetic fields, currents, voltages and, ultimately, sharp corners* cause a multitude of things to go nastily wrong. Or, alternatively, wonderfully right. But, this being problem-solving week, the probability that there is going to be a blog post about everything working absolutely fine is somewhere down there with you getting to see that live Michael Jackson concert next month…

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Battery Box Completion and Testing

Saturday, May 30th, 2009
As the title suggests, the battery box (and all the electronics within it) has been assembled and is currently being tested up at CAPE. We have also shock tested the overall battery, which involved frantically running up and down King’s Parade on the cobbles to see if anything broke (at present, nothing has!). This of course produced a lot of interest, and we had a talk with a group of curious french schoolchildren about CUER, the battery pack, and Global Green Challenge. You never know, we may yet have some more international Friends of CUER!

As a result of the credit crunch, CUER's original solar car design had to be downgraded slightly.

As a result of the credit crunch, CUER's original solar car design had to be downgraded slightly.

Many thanks to everyone that helped out, especially James and Andrew for doing the actual trolley-ing! You didn’t look like muppets at all…

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Battery Pack Manufacture Progress

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

As technical sub-teams shift focus from design to manufacture, so too has the battery pack project, and the pace of manufacture has stepped up in the last few weeks. As of writing, the three battery modules have been fitted with cells, and initial checks have been done by Chao Yu, the lead designer and manufacturer of the battery pack.

Chao says "mess with it and die". We think he's probably right...

Chao says "mess with it and die". We think he's probably right...

So far the project has progressed smoothly with few delays, thanks in no small part to the contributions by REAPsystems Ltd and Farnell UK Ltd. REAPsystems are supporting the project by donating their battery management systems (BMS), which will be used to monitor and control the operation of the Lithium-polymer based pack for optimal performance and reliability, as well as supplying the team with additional components and design expertise. Farnell UK have kindly donated electronic components and tools to CUER, which has been beneficial not only for the battery pack, but also for the rest of the electrical team’s projects.

- Anthony

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