News

Mechanical Team Update

Posted on May 19, 2013 by pjm206

It has been a while since the last mechanical team update. There have been two reasons for this. The first is that the 4^th years on the team have sat our Final Exams at Cambridge, the second being in the little spare time we have had, we have been busy building the car.

As the exams are now over and our 4^th year projects are coming to a close (my first draft was just handed to my supervisor today) we thought it was time for an update.

So what has been going on:

Roll bar manufacture:

Marshall Aerospace kindly agreed to bend the tube for our roll bars at a meeting on a cold and blustery morning back in the beginning of March. Material was ordered and by the end of April we got the call to say the roll bars were complete. I took an afternoon off revision to cycle out to Cambridge Airport to collect them.

Alex Robinson- our Systems Designer and general hero with a lathe then finished the assembly of the front roll bar, which had had to be manufactured in two parts due to machining constraints. He also manufactured some inserts for the …
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Posted in 2013 Car, Blog, Build, Cambridge, Headline, Mechanical, News, Students, Testing | 1 Comment

Looking ahead to WSC 2013

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Roger Poolman

Now in race year, we want to take a quick look at the World Solar Challenge itself. The WSC is a biennial race that first took place in 1987. Since then, the reach of the race has grown, and the 2011 instalment saw 37 teams compete from 20 countries – almost twice as many countries as were represented in the 2005 race. In the same period, solar cell technology and lightweight manufacturing technologies, including the use of carbon fibre, have greatly advanced. To ensure that the competition continues to present opportunities for innovation and achievement, the WSC has improved its regulations governing race vehicles.

This year there were some significant changes to the regulations governing the most competitive class of solar vehicles, the Challenger class. The primary change was a move to four wheels, an important one given the recent domination of three-wheeled designs. Not since 1996 when the Honda Dream took the top spot has a team won this class with a four-wheeled vehicle. Secondly, the regulations governing the driver’s head space and visibility have been tightened. The new quantitative restrictions bring them up to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s transport guidelines and the Australian Government National …
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Posted in 2013 Car, Blog, Headline, News, WSC | 1 Comment

Recruiting Now!

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Keno

We have positions available to suit a wide variety of interests and commitment levels. Come along to one of our meetings.

Either on Wednesday at 1pm or Friday at 5pm to talk to current members of the team. You can come to either or both.

We look forward to seeing you there.

For more information email: joinus@cuer.co.uk

or check out recruitment page http://www.cuer.co.uk/join-us-for-2013-2014/…
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Mechanical Team Blog Post- Lent Week 8

Posted on March 23, 2013 by pjm206

So that is it, another term at Cambridge is over all too soon! Huge amounts of progress have been made! Sorry this post is a little late. As always with the end of term, there are many distractions tying up loose ends, handing in coursework and planning revision for my final exams (which start within a month!). It is strange to say that I will never attend another Cambridge undergraduate lecture, never have to do an examples paper again and never do lab work again. Fortunately it is not quite an end of an era yet. I still have my 4^th year project to complete next term (the crash analysis of the car), and CUER still has plenty of challenges to throw my way!

Nostalgia over – onto an update of our progress:

Members of the mechanical and electrical team meet to discuss progress.…
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Mechanical Team Blog- Lent Term Week 7

Posted on March 7, 2013 by pjm206

Build Progress:

Steve and Thomas welcome you to our new build workshop.

This week, a stiffener (which also acts as the steering rack mounting block) was fitted to the chassis.

…
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Mechanical Team Blog: Lent Term Week 6

Posted on March 1, 2013 by pjm206

Part Machining:

The machining of a wheel to house our motor began with its turning on a lathe. While internal details still require milling into it, the block of aluminium I showed you last week now looks like a wheel!

It went from looking like this:

Via this:

To this:

The quality of the machining is amazing. I must say a huge thank you to the technicians at the Engineering Department’s machine shop for doing such a fantastic job.

…
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Posted in 2013 Car, Aero, Blog, Build, Cambridge, Mechanical, News, Testing | Leave a comment

Mechanical Team Blog- Lent Week 5

Posted on February 22, 2013 by pjm206

Build progress:

Bulkhead consolidation, which has been ongoing for the past 3 weeks, is almost complete. One more session on this is needed in a couple of weeks time to complete this, however the critical parts of the car’s structure are now at full strength.

The rear suspension mounting plate has also been added to the car. This part carries the highest load of any part of the chassis and as a result weighs a couple of kilos. The good news is the chassis is still under our weight target even now it has been fitted to the car.…
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Posted in 2013 Car, Aero, Blog, Build, Cambridge, Composites, Mechanical, News, Students, Testing | Leave a comment

Electrical Team Blog: Lent Term Weeks 1 – 4

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Yang Lu

Significant progress has been made by the CUER electrical team in the past few weeks. After successfully manufacturing and testing our telemetry boards over the winter break, the team set about finalising the rest of the system.

Driver Controls

The design for the driver controls unit has now been finished. The aim was to keep the interface as simple as possible. The decision was taken to remove all non-essential switches and controls off the steering wheel. This increases the reliability of the steering wheel system (something which caused us issues in 2011), and also helps avoid any accidental driver inputs.

Instead, the key vehicle controls have been mounted on a single unit to the right-hand side of the driver. This contains a large reflexive LCD display to effectively display basic vehicle information to the driver, as well as switches for the on-board controls. More detailed car telemetry information will be monitored and analysed by engineers in the chase car.…
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Mechanical Team Blog: Lent Term Weeks 3 and 4

Posted on February 12, 2013 by pjm206

It has been a very busy two weeks for the mechanical team. As a result I did not have time to write a blog last week, so here goes with a two week catch up on what we have been up to:

Build progress

Over last weekend, 22 different team members worked shifts to progress the final stage of lay up on the chassis. This work is required to consolidate the bulkheads (which so far have been glued into place) with the outer skin. Wet layup of carbon sheets around the joints will allow the loads to transfer between parts effectively without causing failure. Work on this will continue for the next two or three weeks.

CUER continued our outreach activities over the weekend by showing students from Ardingly College around our facilities. Ardingly are looking to build their own solar car in the next few years, a fantastic project to get the next generation of engineers excited about the issues that matter. As part of their tour they came to see some of our wet layup and got to see our new car take shape!

…
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