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Thread: Choosing not to follow Colin Chapman

  1. #21
    Mike,
    You snuck that in as I was typing. Yes, I'm probably being too defensive, but I can't sleep so why not bitch on the forum...

    And thanks for reminding me that most teams probably don't have the same resources we have. Sorry if I make that assumption too often. Our closest neighbors in FSAE are at Western Washington Unviversity, home of the V8's and other monstrosities, and we used to have very few CNC'd parts on our car, so I guess I've always thought we were underdogs in the CNC department.

    I do value the contributions of Z, and I agree it's good to talk about crazy ideas and to reevaluate our assumptions. But that doesn't mean he's untouchable... nobody is. Everything is open for debate
    Alumni, University of Washington
    Structural / Mechanical Engineer, Blue Origin

  2. #22
    Senior Member
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    The other aspect of this debate isn't just resources but experience.

    Denny: Your sig says you've been a member of the team for 5 years and I'm assuming you'll be around next year given your mention of summer testing?

    To put that in perspective, I started at Birmingham in 1999 and wasn't able to design parts of the car (project work for upper years) for my first two years. I then took a year out in industry. I returned in 2002 and was able to design the suspension of 1 car and oversee the entire design of a second. I then graduated and now have a job in motorsport.

    Surely FSAE is a means of furthering one's career prospects and ensuring that there's a healthy supply of engineers for the industry. I'm not sure being on an FSAE team for 5 years and incrementally improving at that level of detail is really the point?

    I don't mean that in a nasty way Denny, I respect you hugely and you've done some great work, I'm just interested in how you view the point of FSAE.

    Ben
    -

  3. #23
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    Denny,

    Dude relax. I am not aiming anything at you at all. I am in the process of making my own rack so that was basically a rambling of my own brain to itself. I totally respect you, your knowledge and what you have made. I am not being critical of you whatsoever. The number of times that I have called you were all an effort to pick an experienced fsae head. The are only a few people around here that have a real clue and you are one of them.

    While I think the way I do, I am not suggesting that other people have to think that way. I am just stating a different, in my belif, appropriate way of thinking and doing on these cars. Either think about what I say or throw it down as mindless rambling. I really dont care either way. The reason all this really got triggered was that I am working for ssbc(stainless steel brkae corporation)this summer. They put me on designing their brand new caliper that only took me 3.5 weeks to complete. There would be no way in hell I would have been able to do it in that time and with few to zero mistakes without keeping all that stuff in mind that you think I am a wack job for even considering. Design by marketing is a rough experience and I thought I would put it out there because it is a very valid consideration to the design of these cars if you are looking to get the true, full experience out of this. I assume you already understand most of what I talked about but again you are one of the few that have a clue.

    I wasnt even referring to any inherited fabrication knowledge in any of my statements. That is obvious that we all do get some degree of that. Again in your case more than others. I already know most of that from working in machine shops for the years that I did. Great stuff to pick up but in the real world you wont touch that stuff(obvious exceptions). I think it is more important to understand how to get your parts to the point where they can be made more so than actually knowing how to program on a controller or mastercam style program. I always felt that making it is the easy part. Getting all the resources together(parts supply,material supply,sales quotations,etc.) is the real bitch. I personally choose to spend my time more on that then worrying about actually making it. I am targeting my learning more toward the real world engineering side of this. I have access to so much stuff that I dont have to worry about it. But that is my benefit and I utilize it. Just working with my strengths like everybody else does.

    In the aim of pure performance all of that stuff is meaningless. But none of us are even in that position. Well, maybe a few. So truce to the war I wasnt starting. You keep doing what you do and i'll do what I do and we will see each other at comp. What you put in is what you get out.

  4. #24
    Ben,
    I'm actually trying to wind down my involvement, and finish up my research work this summer or fall at the latest. So, I shouldn't be around after that. But, you never know...

    I don't think being on a team for 5 years is the point of FSAE. I got credit for the '98 and '99 years as an undergrad, but the rest of the years it's just been a fun, compelling diversion. My research work for my MS is not related to FSAE, and I'm not getting any credit or pay for FSAE. But, I'm learning what I want to, and having a good time while I can. There's really nothing like working with your core team members towards a common goal, I'm addicted to it.

    Rob,
    Yeah, I guess I overreacted. And if you're actually designing parts for production, well then good for you
    Alumni, University of Washington
    Structural / Mechanical Engineer, Blue Origin

  5. #25
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    Originally posted by TG:
    My dad has told me this about design which I agree with: First make it work, then make it perform, finally make it cost effective. You start off with a concept and before anything you make the thing work, otherwise it is worthless. Obviously you have benchmark performace and cost in mind, but you don't have to meet them at first. After you get it working do you spend time making it better in performance and cost.

    Tim Gruhl
    ASU Motorsports
    I think this is very good advice.

    On another thread it was generally agreed that if you are a first year team then it is a good idea to build a car with a highly adjustable suspension, ie. you start with a complicated car. The adjustability allows you to get the suspension "working" in the first place, and further fine tuning gets the "performance". The third step, "make it cost-effective", involves getting rid of much of the adjustability, ie. "simplificating". And there's the rub...

    By way of explanation, many of the companies that I worked for didn't take step 3 too seriously. Some engineers don't like "dumbing down" their designs. The bosses think that the engineers who are trying to simplificate the design, say, by minimizing part count, are just playing with their toys - "Hey, it works OK! Now let's move onto the next project!". The beancounters just want to replace each part with a cheaper, lower quality part, without actually changing or improving the basic design. Of course, a lot of this was due to "windows of opportunity" and gullible customers who were prepared to pay extra.

    I think that the nature of FSAE - a rush to get a car built and working - means that there is (sometimes ) a similar lack of commitment to "refining" the car, ie. "making it cost effective". That's why I liked Rob's comments on the previous page. Namely, keep low-cost in mind right from the beginning, and you've got a better chance of ending up with a lightweight, reliable, efficient, economical, simplificated car.

    Z

  6. #26
    Well I think a lot of teams out there think about what they want to do and not what they can do. When you look at this competition the two main factors that should affect all your design thinking, in my opinion, is your team's human resources and how to score max. points out of a 1000.

    Most fsae cars I see are under tested, under developed and hence aren't normally as fast or reliable as they should be for this competition. When you look at one of the main objectives of the competition (scoring 1000 points) the thing that stands out the most within the points structure is the enduro/fuel with 400 points. (the other main objectives being safety, learning and fun). You must finish this event and finish well to have a chance of doing well in the overall standings. To achieve speed and reliability, testing is needed, hence having a day or two of shakedown or running for the first time in the brake test, is a recipe for disaster, plus its no fun when a car is late and you don't get a change to drive and understand it. So when making decisions about the overall design and individual systems you have to work out how you can get in 3 months of testing with the man power and facilities you have available. People talk a lot about Cornell's design concept a lot and it obviously works extremely well for them but they overlook the fact that they have the car driving at least three months before the competition every year. In my opinion this gives you a huge advantage in terms of development, tuning and driver training time and is more important than saving the last 5 kg or having some "fully sic" system on the car.

    When looking at a design concepts from super simple to really complex it really depends on your resources, but if you can build a really sophisticated car and still get a solid couple of months testing in, more power to you. If you have a 20 people or so who are committed, intelligent and experienced trying new systems, like forced induction, aerodynamic devices, custom dampers etc. is a great idea and I think they should definitely be done in this competition. The competition is richer for having lots of different ideas but innovation is a strange word. As Z bought up what is really innovative these days? Turbos, awd, wings etc. have all been done a lot in many automotive and racing applications. The only things I have seen that are "innovative" in FSAE in the last couple of years are from UWA with their quick cure tubs and kinetics suspension system.

    Personally I'm a big believer in lightweight and simple. As one of the only racing classes in the world with no minimum weight it must be a priority to get light because you can't can't get past F=ma. If you do a detailed weight analysis of an fsae car you can see that it is very possible to get a 600-4, tube frame with 13's under 200 kg. Also because of the make up of teams, eg. students with varied amounts of experience and understanding, it's probably a good idea to keep things simple and get them finished early. If you then have time left in the campaign, a more sophisticated system that could gain time can be tried.
    If you look at rockers and push/pullrods as Z has mentioned, they weigh very little but they are another component to design, build, install, maintain and possibly fail. You can get a more suitable motion ratio, reduce unsprung mass and lower cg. (in the case of pullrod) with them but it is a compromise. Once you choose your tyres everything on the car and every design decision is a compromise. At the end of the day I'd rather be testing the car around a track than be standing in a work shop making parts.

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