In the good news we are really making good progress with composites.
We'll start with the nose section of the cockpit liner, that was laid up today and test fitted in the chassis. It needs more work but is looking the goods (although it's a mongrel of a lay up using all kinds of scraps we had left in the workshop.....fingers crossed the final part is half decent)
Above you can see the assortment of fabrics used, some carbon, some fibreglass and some other cloth which I have forgotten the name just now.
Below you see what the mould looked like after we wrestled the part off it. We had to break the surface coating in places because it just would not budge, also have to run a split down the top of it to help spread it and peel it off. I will have to go back and splice this small section at the top front end of the liner later, we had half planed to do that because we anticipated it to be really hard to remove from the mould.
Below you will see or make shift heater / oven. The part came off slightly under-done so we had to try and cook it some more. We are pushing tight deadlines now so we didn't really have time to wait for it to fully sure. We took it off the mould while it was slightly still flexible, helped a little in removing it but we tried to stiffen it up a bit soon as we had test fitted it. We just draped it back over the mould and heated it with the heat gun under a plastic drop seat on one of our race car rolling stands.
Below The liner and the body are test fitted on the chassis.
Test fit view, if you are familiar with the FSAE competition you may know about the chassis sizing templates that must be passed through the interior of the car, the white / cream shape you can see above in the nose of the car is one of them being test fitted with the interior cockpit liner in place. So far we think we pass.....we'll see.
Below The body work on the male mould as Tim Stockton makes some cut aways of excess laminate. We hope to send it off to the painter tomorrow so it was a mad rush to try and get as much of the small fitting work done today.
Above Tim Stockton all gumbied up in PPE, looking like an extra from an early James Bond film or some kind of nuclear technician, Tim attacks the body work with a grinder to get the right shapes where needed.
Above MC (Michael Connaughton) our technical director for the last 2 years, takes a happy snap for his personal collection. Can you blame him, things are starting to look pretty tops.
Here's what he was looking at, haha just something to lighten the mood.
Above Our black beauty, too bad this will almost all be painted over.
Below seat section of the liner has some marking on it made for holes to be cut for belts and gear shifter etc. Drill and an angle grinder do an OK job of cutting the shapes, final work is done with sand paper and then a rubber lip will be glued on to create a nice edge.
Below Tim Stockton can carry the male mould from the body work single handed. Apparently it is not that heavy. Looks great and he has done a stirling job over many months to create the male plug and then female moulds to finally produce the bodywork part. We think it's amazing he still smiles about being in the workshop after mid-night everytime he comes in to work on the car build......then again we're not really the average engineering students are we, you definately need a little something extra to stick at it.
Great surface finish has really made releasing the part much easier than in past years attempts at composite work. CMT helping the next generation of engineers to grow and develop their skills.....who'd have ever thought.
Still to come.......a list too big to bore you all to death with but the cockpit liner and ergonomics side of things (which is my baby.....Errol's) is as follows.
Finalise the holes in the seat for the gear shifter, harness straps, sort out mounting points for the liner, finish the lay-up of the liner, possibly paint and coat the liner again, get the mirrors on the car, get the dash lay-up finished and sort out mounting it and try get the mechatronic guys to wire up the dash.
Bunch of welding for all the mounts, still need head restraint finalised (design is done just need some small fabrication work done in-house)
The list goes on.....but we'll make it.
Keep your eyes open and stay 'In Tune' with team progress.
