Car launch 2010

Friday 12th November

Design boards: These are prints taken from our 2010 design report that is a submission required for the FSAE competition. They detail the design and manufacture processes that create our race car.

High Tech: The highly technical support method for our design board display, I think it worked well to create that motorsports feel.

Above: Drinks and nibbles supplied by the team, we enjoy giving back to those that give so much support to us.

 

What could it be? : Tim Keely from Science and Engineering marketing at Curtin University plays for the camera just before the event started. Tim is a great help to the team and just a great fan of our work. We often work together at events such as Open Day and Careers fair in Perth to really spread the word about the opportunities that exist with engineering at Curtin University.

Talk the talk: Nathan Staats (project manager), gives a short speech about the Twenty10 race car build and our hopes for FSAE-A this year in December.

Snap shot of the short video we played, it was a collection of photo's and time lapse film taken over the year during the build of our 2010 race car. Thanks goes to Greg Miller (mechatronic engineer on the team) for putting it together for us. We will upload the video to our website and YouTube page soon.

 

Marketing stands by management: Errol Hassett (left), marketing, and Nathan Staats (right), project manager. They have so far proved to be a great team for CMT in 2010, marketing and team direction have continued to progress towards continued improvement, great work guys.

Words from above: Tilak Chandratileke (Head of Department for Mechanical Engineering at Curtin University) gives his thoughts on CMT and this years car. Tilak and the department of mechanical engineering at Curtin university are a great support to have in our corner as we do our very best to show that Curtin really is producing some of the most innovative hard working engineers around.

CMT Twenty10

Thanks to all our sponsors and supporters this year, wish us the best of luck for FSAE-A this year.

Seat update....needs lots of adjustment

The seat is again proving to be a more challenging project than anticipated.

It has many rules governing it's position and size and so getting the belts to go through into the driver compartment is a tricky process. Also because we don't want to destroy the seat and cut holes where we don't need them it's hard to start to make cuts and holes when you really need the seat fully mounted in the chassis with a driver sitting in it to know exactly where these all go.

With the chassis unable to be soley used to mock this up at this late stage it is a bit of a guessing game, the solid works design used a model of a driver but there really is nothing liek the real thing so you can't trust this 100%.

Also makig life a little harder is the fact that the harness mounts are 30mm out of position due to a manufacturing error, it is too late to re-make these so we are using what we got but the seconday problems are just becoming a little be-motivating and slowing progress down.

I have decided that we are jst going to have t cut holes as best we can and keep cutting and shaping them till the seat sits right, we still have the mould so if need be we can add some patching to the composite lay-up later down the track once we know the belts will go where we want and comply with the rules.

Here is a few pics of the progress over the weekend...slow but now we have a pretty good game plan written down with a list of priorities to get done by our car launch this Friday, we just need it to be sitting in the car with belts through it so it looks the business, we can finalise the hard mounting points later.

Oh did I mention we all have exams over the next 3 weeks and the car goe on a truck to melbourne on the last day of exams ? This is the most fun you will have in you're engineering degree.



Above I use a drill bit that has the milling type teeth on it's shank so that I can easily cut complex curves. I start with lots of holes around the perimeter on the inside of where I want the final cut. I then mill between the holes joining them all up using the sideways cutting ability of the drill bit. Then I get a nice sharp half-round file and try to neaten up the edge. It works fairly well and is the most effective method I have found to do this type of work, I have been involved in the seat making in '08, '09 and this year so I'll building a knowledge of what NOT to do by making mistakes.....some would call it learning. Still got a lot to learn and still making mistakes but thats life, we do what we can.



Above test fitting the belt holes in the seat to see what will work and where we need adjustment. The lap belt holes (on the sides) should be ok I have marked where they need to be enlarged for the haress clips to fit through. The submarine (crotch) strap does fit through the opening but the belts will slightly rub on the seat at the moment which is no good, either have to cut the holes more to taper a slot towards the mount to enable a good angle of wrap around the drivers thighs or add a steel tube bar that just touches the underside of the seat, the belts would wrap around this so that they have a nice smooth radius transition up towards the driver, just have to ensure a good wrap around the drivers legs again though.

Intake pictures

The intake is already fabricated and on the test engine waiting to be fully tuned but here are some pictures from manufacturing that you may not have seen.

The intake base-plate with the custom made trumpets.

These are to hold the injectors in the manifold.

Intake base-plate with the runners being postioned and taped ready for welding.

As an update to the latest progress.......

The engine side of the 2010 Curtin Motorsport Team car has been slowly but steadily progressing throughout the year. The manufacture of the exhaust is set to be completed in the coming week once the engine is mounted in the chassis and the newly purchased TIG welder arrives.


The intake is undergoing the final modifications for completion such as vacuum line barbs and fuel delivery system mounts.

The most exciting progress occurred this month when Glenn Campbell came in to help a few of the team members to start the engine with the newly acquired Vi-PEC engine management system implemented this year. After many hours of trial and error that ended in the early hours of the morning, the engine finally started.

A big thank you too Glenn Campbell for his time and knowledge.

The next step, once both the intake and exhaust are completed is to have the car dyno tuned which Glenn is once again doing for the team.

Dress to Impress

The CMT 2010 FSAE team should look quite charming in this year team shirt.

Thanks, again goes to the highly skilled and helpful staff at Ace Promotions, we should be sporting this flash new tops in coming weeks. A slight chnage from last years colours but still pleasing and keeping with our cars scheme we should still remain our proffessional look as we hope to continue looking as great as we feel our engineering work is.

Thanks again to all the staff at Ace Promotions for their continued help and support, with special thanks going to Michelle Pullella for providing such friendly help both in 2009 and this year.

In House Services including Embroidery, Screenprinting, Pad Printing, Large Format Printing & Direct to Garment Printing.
http://www.acepromotions.com.au/

9 Century Road, Malaga, Perth WA 6090

(08) 9248 3300

Open Weekdays 8am-5

Cockpit liner mounting bracket

With laser cutters taking a long time just to get quotes back to us some of us have started to do things the old fashioned way.

Errol needed a bracket for the cockpit liner to mount to so this is how he has gone about producing it.

1. Model it in solidworks
2. Print it out on paper            (very high tech)
3. Cut it to shape
4. Glue it to appropriate sheet steel (a glue-stick can be a handy thing to have in the workshop at times)
5. Gut to size with angle grinder   (used a cutting disc, worked a treated, rough shaped first then neaten)
6. Clean edges with bench grinder and sand paper    (just to get rid of burrs and sharp bits)
7. Centre punch marks for holes
8. Drill holes     (all the holes were basically the same diameter, made life very easy)
9. Bend edges with Magna-bender    (often can't bend certain edges because not enough materail exposed to the magnetic strip for a great enough force to resist the bending motion, will often just lift off the bed, can become a hge pain in the butt)
10. Bend other edges in vice with hammer and large amount of skill slash luck
11. Test fit in chassis
12. Hammer the bends some more
13. Test fit again
14. Mark position for welding

That all may seem a little silly but it got the job done and we don't have to wait weeks for the part, all in all only took 3 hours from thought "....I should make that bracket " to " I just made that bracket " so that's not so bad.

Cut and paste: The paper template glued to the sheet steel for cutting, cut the shaped pretty close 1st go but not too close then I went back and tidied up the tricky bits and fish mouthing on the ends all with the cutting disc. About 15 - 20 mins work

Bending my way around a problem: The magna-bender wasn't being friendly so I resorted to alternate methods, not pretty way to do it I know but it got the job done in the end, only had to go back and forth twice after my initial gues at the bends. Surprisingly the end product fits almost as designed, definately close enough to be deemed in the " GOOD " range of work.

The part is now mocked up in the chassis ready to be welded in place on Monday, I will upload a picture later of the final product, I seemed to have forgotten to take a happy snap of it at the time.

Targa West 2010

Well thanks to the organisation of John Hurney, Curtin Motorsport was invited to put on a static display of the '09 FSAE race car today.

Was a great day, the sun came out for everyone to get an amazing up close view of the racing.

UWA motorsport and Edith Cowan Racing (the other two FSAE teams from WA), put on a dynamic demonstration prior to the targa west cars arriving in Perth.

UWA's Pete Marsh was setting a cracking pace through the course but came slightly unstuck as he tried to flick the rear of the car around the hair-pin on Riverside Drive (Swan Bells end).

They damaged the sidepod of their cars body work but simply removed it and took to the course once again to really hightlight the performance of the FSAE racecars.


Unfortunately CMT have been troubled with a low oil pressure problem and having blow an engine earlier in the year at the Colie motorplex from the same problem we opted to not risk driving our car on the day. We have had moderate success trying to solve the problem during the year, moving towards a dry sump oil system but this has now showing signs having it's own problems.

Shortly the '09 race car will be dismantled to re-use suspension components for the Twenty10 racecar. This saves on cost and manufacturing time which are both of short supply.

After having a team shake up to stir engineers into being more productive we are making good head way towards a rolling car. We have set a team deadline of the 8th of November to have a fully running and operation racecar. It's a push but it's by no means unachievable.

Our computer model is looking great and we believe this year we are going to produce our most well engineered car yet.

Keep your eyes glued to this page to keep 'In Tune' with team progress over the next two months, big things are set to happen.

Above: The CMT display (inbetween UWA Motorsport and Edith Cowan Racing)

A picture of the switch that manually switches on our electronic water pump (a small joke to keep up team spirits)

Hiding inside the side pod is our muffler, might I am that it's fairly loud (it will have to be quieter this year)

A view of beautiful Perth, the weather was nice for the day.

Membership Drive

CMT is currently looking for new members.

Each year we require more and more students to join our project to enable us to create our amazing race cars.

Want to get more out of your time at uni and be apart of the FSAE competition ?

Follow the link below and you can know more about what to expect.


http://mech.eng.curtin.edu.au/local/docs/miscellaneous/looking%20for%20new%20members%20in%202010%20v2.pdf


also don't forget to visit our official website.

http://motorsport.curtin.edu.au/

CMT into 2010

Well we have had our ups and downs through the history of the team and it seems we've hit another down.

Our race engine have decided to give up after years of use. It seems pistons and valves have been getting to friendly with each other and as such we are currently (desperately) looking for replacements and or alternatives.

We had hoped to enter a few hill climb events early this year before the university semester starts. A few members visited Jack Hill in Wanneroo just for a look over the weekend even though we were unable to compete.

In good news, we are looking for new members and have our 2010 team launch coming up, Febuary 17th, 6pm till 7pm at Curtin Univeristies new Chemistry building we will display the 2009 race car for our sponsers and supporters.

Invites will come out soon so keep a watch on your mail.

For those following from university, please email 'motorsport@curtin.edu.au' for a flyer on how to join us in 2010.

Fingers crossed we have a new motor within the next month or so, finances are the only restraint at the moment, we are looking into a possible swap from the 4 cylinder honda to a smaller 4 cyl turbo or single cyl option.