Sheet Metal Uprights

[Ballzac]

Does anyone have pictures of FSAE uprights made of sheet metal? I've heard it's been done and I'd like to see the result.

Thanks.

[Ballzac]

Does anyone have pictures of FSAE uprights made of sheet metal? I've heard it's been done and I'd like to see the result.

Thanks.

[Big Bird]

Uni of Wollongong have made some pretty damn decent steel uprights - give their website a go.

Cheers

[Mi_Ko]

We made them two years ago. Very simple in manufacture and design. Yust lasercutting and welding.
I do not have any FEA results, but I'll try to find some pics.

[jack]

i believe georgia tech. has really nice sheet metal uprights, mabye send them an email.

[BeaverGuy]

These are some pictures I took in Detroit.
http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~gilletjo/Pics/IMG00026.JPG
http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~gilletjo/Pics/IMG00023.JPG
http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~gilletjo/Pics/IMG00062.JPG
http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~gilletjo/Pics/IMG00063.JPG

[Ashley Denmead]

Whos car is that with the carbon uprights???

[BeaverGuy]

I can't remember unfortunately but they were an Australian or British team. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif The one interesting thing was that the front uprights are the sheetmetal ones at top.

[RaID]

we will be runnig sheet metal uprights
front and rear

heres a pic of the rear http://formula-sae.adelaide.edu.au/photos/2004/Construction/slides/DSCF0288.JPG

we havent got pics of the front yet
rest of construction pics at
http://formula-sae.adelaide.edu.au

[Nate Notta]

So with sheet metal uprights does everyone use steel? 1/8 inch? I am thinking aluminum would be out of the question.

Also, I guess the sheet metal uprights will come out a lot cheaper than CNC'd aluminum uprights, but how does the weight compare... anyone want to say or at least guess?

If they are as light, and easy and cheap, I think they're the way to go.

Nate
UofWindsor

[Amos]

"So with sheet metal uprights does everyone use steel? 1/8 inch?"

Ahhh... the picture posted by RaID is what we're making at the mo. They're 30 thou (0.76mm) chromolly.
It looks weighty until ya pick it up, they are coming up a treat!

[Eddie Martin]

I think the carbon upright is from the uni of new foundland.

Have a look on our web page for pics of our car.

One of the big things to consider when deciding on whether to go with steel folded or cnc aluminium is the facilities you have available to you. We don't have any cnc machines at our uni so water jet cutting, folding and welding works best for us.

Always play to your strengths.

[Brian Smith]

Raid,

Can you explain your upright. I'm just not getting it. I mean where does the spindle go? Is that a pic of the front or rear? What the heck??

[Brian Smith]

nevermind. I found this picture on your website. cool....

http://formula-sae.adelaide.edu.au/photos/2004/FinalVC/slides/rear%20suspension%20rear%20view%202.jpg

[Greg H]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by BeaverGuy:
I can't remember unfortunately but they were an Australian or British team. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif The one interesting thing was that the front uprights are the sheetmetal ones at top. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I would rule out Australians because their catch-cans are Foster's cans. You should check some of the other forum posts to see what they think about that particular beverage.

[Ben Beacock]

We did sheet aluminum uprights. Had a few problems with weld quality on the fronts (ie my welds suck) but the rears worked great and were light.

http://www.vwot.org/community/modules/Gallery/albums/albuo79/PICT0284.sized.jpg

the goal this year is to compare with an equivalent cromoly steel unit and see which is lighter/stiffer.

[Ballzac]

Wow, aluminum sheet metal? How much did they weigh, if you don't mind me asking.

[Garbo]

The first set of steel uprights and the carbon ones are mine, Memorial University of Newfoundland. The steel was 0.0625 1020.

The carbon ones were 6-10 layers of 0.22mm prepreg with bonded aluminum hardpoints. If you try carbon uprights, make sure the hardpoints are bonded in well so they don't come apart 2 laps before you are supposed to swap in for the second half of enduro... The problem was that there were some air pockets in the epoxy holding in the hard points... but I'm not bitter.

Also, the fosters catch can was the only one we could find that was big enough for the tech judges. The coolant overflow was a good old Molson Canadian.

garbo

[rjwoods77]

Hey RaID,
Congrats for being cool enough to run a dedion. What are you running for link sizes and material types? Again, congrats for being smart enough to run that system. Kinda the best of both worlds. Have you managed to design it light enough. Crosstube size?

[rjwoods77]

Hey RaID,
How is that 80/20 working for you. Are the extrusions perfectly straight? How accurate? I was thinking of using that myself.

[rjwoods77]

Hey RaId,
And the outboard joints that are outboard of the upright. You guys did your homework. I dont know why people with independant rears dont do that more. I see tons of pics with rear uprights with huge scrub that could do it the way you do. I cant see for sure but if you were really cool you would make the outboard cv housing the center lock for one nut rims and use the humps on the housing as drive dogs.

[rjwoods77]

Hey RaID,
I meant the green things under the axle nut. Not the bolt bosses on the back. See everyone, I dont hate everything that people do. Hahahahahaha.

[Denny Trimble]

Rob,
Brown University has run de-dion for the last several years. In case you're assuming it's new to FSAE...

http://www.engin.brown.edu/organizations/fsae/pics/2002engine4.jpg

I really like the looks of the Adelaide car! Lots of sweet parts, and good renderings too. I hope it comes together well and performs!

[RacingManiac]

This is our design from 2004, made from 4130 Chromo...we used varying thickness for the sheetmetal depends on faces, anywhere from .035 to 0.080. The design itself has been pretty similar since 2002(only on front), in 2004 the biggest difference from 2003 is we went from a spindle front to a hub-based design for rigidity reason...Front
http://speed.supercars.net/pitlane/pics/459041b.jpg

Rear
http://speed.supercars.net/pitlane/pics/459041a.jpg

Rear with now caliper mount welded
http://speed.supercars.net/pitlane/pics/459047d.jpg

[rjwoods77]

Denny,
Yeah I knew. There's is a little messy looking though. Also what was with doing the longitudal motor before. Seemed odd to do. I'm hoping to get a mention from Racetech or racecar. Every report they have is like "bla,bla,bla so and so's car was perfect" for like 2 paragraphs. Then they have the "well this is interesting, will be good when they get the kinks out" parts. I wanna be in that part. But hopefully it works good.

[rjwoods77]

It seems the same amount of work...,
It seems that it isnt any less time consuming to do machined or welded sheetmetal uprights. The labor is more for the sheetmetal but the setup time is more for machined so they kinda cancel each other out. Also, when it is machined you are guarantedd accuracy. I cant see a welded sheetmetal being too accurate (plus/minus .0625 to .03125) unless you jig it up into something which in itself shifts the balance of time spent advantage back to machined upright. This isnt taking weight into consideration. Just talking about time. I think it is cool as hell to do a sheet shell upright. I remember Benz had a F1 engine block that was all welded sheetmetal with the cylinder bores being loctaed by jigs. Lightweight as hell but they went away from it due to production time and they had problems maintaining geometry due to heat,stress,etc.

[Denny Trimble]

Maniac,
Nice looking uprights, but it looks like you have studs that thread into the conical spherical bearing "clearance spacers", which are welded to the upright. Why not make the stud one-piece with the tapered spacer? This would put the shear force through solid/welded structure, instead of through a threaded interface with an offset...

Or is there a reason you did it that way?

[RacingManiac]

it was more of an manufacturing issue with how they were jig up. With those ARP studs we can just unscrew the stud to remove the finished upright from the jig. When they are on the car the stud is fixed using *gulp* red Loctite to retain it in place then the a-arm's ball joint just go on the stud and retained with a crown nut with safety wire hold drilled on the stud to retain the whole assembly(drilling ARP stud is not fun...). The area of the upright and those interfaces in general are under redesign for 2005 as it became one member's 4th year thesis project, and at the moment he is looking into CNC billet again....our experience wise with the sheetmetal had been pretty good though, but the manufacturing had always been more of a pain as Rob mentioned. more so in the case of maintaining consistancy in the accessory on the upright such as the steering pickup, brake caliper mount and so forth...

[Charlie]

But guys, honestly anodized aluminum is so purty! (That's Alabamian for nice looking)

http://www.eng.auburn.edu/organizations/SAE/AUFSAE/IMG_2088.JPG

Our cheif engineer looked into sheet metal last year, Honestly don't have his numbers but stiffness was pretty much a wash for either side, and at best you can only get the same accuracy with sheet metal that you can with AL. But like Eddie said, play to your strengths, you may find one method much better than another. And your design may cater better to one as well.

[clausen]

Cheers Rob,

We're looking forward to seeing how it puts the power down.

What's 80/20?

The links we're using a 1.2 wall MS tube, 16mm for the trailing arms, and 12.7 for the others. They'll look a bit spindly, but the buckling calcs say they are way strong enough. The tube is 3 inch, 4.5mm wall aluminium, which is totally overkill. I wanted 0.8mm steel, but couldnt get it bent, 1.6 was a minimum. This aluminium was the same weight and stiffness, but we could get it supplied and bent for free. It will also polish up well http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

The unsprung weight is almost exactly the same as last years (IRS) car. I'd just like to get a 1/2 kilo a side out of it by using a thinner tube (tube is 2kg)

We needed to run out hubs outboard as far as possible because our diff sits very low in the car (because there's no huge sprocket due to the geardrive), so there's a fair bit of driveshaft angle to try and minimise.
The hubs are pretty bulky though. We used the CV joint as the hub, so the wheel bearings wrap around it, which was already going to make for pretty big bearings, but then we needed to go another 5mm up in bearing diameter to get free ones.

As for sheet metal uprights in general. I belive up until recently fabricated cro-mo uprights were still used in F1. Maybe some still do. The nice thing is that you can make complete box structures, rather than having to have open shapes for cutter access. Surely this is the way to get the best stiffness to weight.

[clausen]

oh, 80/20 in the welding jig!

I didnt work with it, but I know it's very straight stuff. The accuracy problems come from needing to cut or mill the ends of it perfectly square.

[rjwoods77]

Hey Clausen,
80/20 is that extruded jig tubing you have. Company called 80/20 Metric makes it. Good stuff but I just don't know if it is geometrically straight. You should get good hook on that thing. I am doing something kinda like that and I know from experience that it will grab. If you do it right you can tune you car to never squat on acceleration and use the link geometry to passively steer you car some. I grew up around dirt track oval racing so I have seen what a 4 link can do. If you ever get the chance go see an World of Outlaw(WoO) race. They have the power to weight of a formula car but race on .5 and 1 ovals tracks. You wanna talk acceleration!!!!! 800-900 hp and 1200lbs minimum weight. And that is out of approx. 400 inch of v8 so the thing s have pretty huge torque numbers even for such a spinny motor. The box structure is definitely better if you have the room for it. I don't so much because of my settings.

[RaID]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rob Woods:
Hey RaID,
Congrats for being cool enough to run a dedion. What are you running for link sizes and material types? Again, congrats for being smart enough to run that system. Kinda the best of both worlds. Have you managed to design it light enough. Crosstube size? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I can't take credit for the rear end design
its pretty much Clausen's design

I just did the rear spindle/cv and hub

[RacingManiac]

Speaking of F1 uprights today....

http://supercarfreak.net/gallery/album727

quite eyeopening experience I've had over the summer, especially at the F1 races...

[RaID]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rob Woods:
Hey RaId,
And the outboard joints that are outboard of the upright. You guys did your homework. I dont know why people with independant rears dont do that more. I see tons of pics with rear uprights with huge scrub that could do it the way you do. I cant see for sure but if you were really cool you would make the outboard cv housing the center lock for one nut rims and use the humps on the housing as drive dogs. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The "green" studs are the drive dowels
they bolt the outer spindle(on which the axle nut is placed in the rendering above) with the cv part of the spindle

[rjwoods77]

The carbon/carbon rotors on that ferrari were made by a graphite machining company in rochester where i worked over the summer. They prototyped them for brembo in 2002 and i believe they are carried over. Unbelievably expensive stuff they are made out of. The place had so many military, government, medical, computer industry based items they were making. We made the graphite mold for the titanium tubs that pilots sit in helicopters i believe they were for. I had one of those rotors n my hands but it was just normal grade of graphite. They also make these huge carbon/carbon brakes for boeing 700 series planes for their brakes. Huge almost 360 degree double face contact brake discs. So cool but working there was so dirty.

[Greg H]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rob Woods:
I'm hoping to get a mention from Racetech or racecar. Every report they have is like "bla,bla,bla so and so's car was perfect" for like 2 paragraphs. Then they have the "well this is interesting, will be good when they get the kinks out" parts. I wanna be in that part. But hopefully it works good. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
So I guess you also got the Race Tech from the 2003 competition that featured us, K-State's sidewinder car, and Brown's de-dion axle. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[rjwoods77]

Greg,
I saw it. I'm 27 so I have been following the competition for about 5 years now. I always do my best to read up onm who was doing what and what was the" next best thing". It helped me form some of my design ideas. I like anything that breaks the mold in general.

[Mi_Ko]

Hey RacingManiac, thanks for the F1 pics! (and others)
I have one question about them. Is the front rod from the upper A-arm also the steering rod, or am I missing something? (you can see the detail on pic. nr. 79!)

[RacingManiac]

I think for a while now in F1 they've been running their front steering arm inside a carbon shell integrated to the upper a-arm....