'How' do you build you car?

[Davidimurray]

Hello everyone

I just thought I would throw this out as I thought it was quite interesting. We have recently been looking at how much time etc it takes to make bits for or last FS car. The big issue we identified was that machining is a problem as it relies on having skilled people. Fortunately we have had 2 skilled machinists on the team who have done a lot of the work in previous years.

Just looking at making/machining (i.e. not design, wiring, assembly/fitting or testing) we found that the work was divided up as below

2 student machinists - 515 hours (59%)
FS Team - 134 Hours (15%)
University Workshop - 86 Hours (10%)
Outside companies/sponsors - 143 (16%)

I was wondering how other FS teams manage to build their cars and how much support do they get from their own workshop staff, volunteers, companies etc?

Cheers

Dave

[Davidimurray]

Hello everyone

I just thought I would throw this out as I thought it was quite interesting. We have recently been looking at how much time etc it takes to make bits for or last FS car. The big issue we identified was that machining is a problem as it relies on having skilled people. Fortunately we have had 2 skilled machinists on the team who have done a lot of the work in previous years.

Just looking at making/machining (i.e. not design, wiring, assembly/fitting or testing) we found that the work was divided up as below

2 student machinists - 515 hours (59%)
FS Team - 134 Hours (15%)
University Workshop - 86 Hours (10%)
Outside companies/sponsors - 143 (16%)

I was wondering how other FS teams manage to build their cars and how much support do they get from their own workshop staff, volunteers, companies etc?

Cheers

Dave

[exFSAE]

DFM is huge huge huge for these cars, particularly for machining.

Have your most experienced machinists design the most important machined parts. Likewise welders for weldments.

Smart design and DFM.. smart material selection (AL2024/6061/7075, SS416, AISI1144).. good tooling (carbide ALL the way except maybe for drills).. good machines.. good operators. Combination of that results in things like reducing machine time from 1 week to 1 hour per upright for example. No exaggeration. I done it.