Solar Car Club » Meeting

Meeting Notes 10/15/2010

Dustin Sanders — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:21:46 +0000

Hey everyone, Just an update, we have requested Feb 26 or 27th (Saturday or Sunday) for our makeup day for today.

Everyone wishing to participate must get training, i sent everyone the list last week, please mark your calendars to see if you can go to one of them. I’m still trying to get someone to come to the school like last year. I know that would be easier for most everyone. I’ll keep everyone updated if i hear anything about that.

We filled out the paperwork for Buffalo wild wings fundraising, lets hope that works out well, we’ll ask for volunteers when more info comes available. I would ultimately like everyone make some effort to stand somewhere on campus and hand them out. It would be good to try to coordinate times and where. But we can talk about that when the times comes.

We are going to build a spot welder here in the next few weeks to gear up for the new battery pack. I came up with a great idea (i hope) that will make the construction of the battery pack relevantly simple, cheap and easy to swap batteries (all 3 of the criteria for our team ) More on that as design is finalized.

Mechanical team talked in depth about the design of the chassis specifically starting with the wheels. There has been some debate and ideas on what to do about the rims. For now we will assume we will use the same rims as we do now (probably steal the spares to make sure everything works if we havn’t gotten them in. I also found a really expensive alternative (1500 a rim) http://www.ghcraft.com/shops/cfw/cfw_e.htm these are the rims standford are using. So if anyone finds a good cheap rim we could use for the car (14-16″ light weight rims). Maybe we can just design our own =). (only 1/2 kidding).

The tests were done on the old car to get our baseline complete. She’s a tough little car. I’ll let Mike post the results from that as well as his comments on each test and how its gonna effect the design.

Amy will have pictures and videos up when she gets time.

9/17/2010 Meeting Notes

Dustin Sanders — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:57:40 +0000

Very productive meeting last Friday. Went over the projects that needed to get started ASAP.

Projects are:

FUNdraising:

JESC
- Update Powerpoint
- Update Written proposal
- Update Budgets. Need a separate Tool Budget
- Tool budget is communal for all school teams
- WE want a new TIG welder with that budget
IEEE
- Oct 1st meeting
- Make short presentation
- Written proposal mostly done
Parade
- Research all available parades that we could walk in
- Find Companies to offer our advertising services to
- Make Offers to wear shirts, wear signs, and paint side of car

Electrical:

Battery Protection (BPS) MK3

Wei Wu, Scott P

Test/Research BQ78PL114 TI chip usage

Research the BQ76PL536

Test with single batteries

Driver Support
Amy, ???

www.gumstix.net

Create Build enviroment

Test writing rom to flash

Create “Hello World” Program (CMD|GUI)

Battery Pack
Keith, ???
Make battery matrix
Closest weight with most batteries (22kg)
over 100V Nominal Voltage

Solar Panel Research
Jake, Kevin
Create Solar Cell Matrix

Most cells, in full panels, maximize 3m²Make Cell Test Box

Mechanical:

Battery Pack Covers

>Mike, Andy

Impact Analysis, Solar Array Attachment Design

>Mike, Chico

New Car Frame Dimensions, Tire Analysis, and Suspension Research

>Mikes Senior Design Group

–Mike really needs to talk to somebody about the new motor/wheel configuration

Old Car hatch locking mechanism

>Mike is almost done

Take/Make dimensions of new car cockpit

Design Solar Panel Array Supports and Frame

Learn how motor attaches to wheel

Welcome Back!

Dustin Sanders — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 04:35:19 +0000

Hey all. I wanna thank everyone who was able to come to the meeting last Friday, I think we got our goals out and are on our way to getting this thing moving. The attendance wasn’t as many as I was expecting and I think this is due to the Friday, many of you had classes @ 1 or worked. I’m thinking of having a meeting this Thursday for those who missed it and wish to hear what we had to say and be part of the discussion. If you would like to get with me Thursday to discuss the team, please email me times your available so I can setup a time and place to meet.

To supplement the meeting I’m attaching the PowerPoint that was displayed during the meeting as well as the handout that we gave everyone. This should fill you in on just about everything that was talked about.

The website will be constantly updated with current projects that need worked on. Please visit this often if you cannot make the meetings.

For those who haven’t and are wanting to be active members please fill out this with the times your busy so i can best figure out meeting times.

If anyone has any questions or would like to get a hold of me to start working on a project, email me back and i can get you in touch with who you need to talk to (if its not me =) )

Thanks again look forward to working with all of you!

First_Meeting_handout

First Meeting 2010 Presentation

First Meeting of the Semester!

MechEngineerMike — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:21:52 +0000

The meeting will be in room 1027 in the Engineering Building at 1:00 pm this Friday, Sept 10th . Old, new, and prospective members are all welcome to attend.

Meeting Notes 8-6-10

MechEngineerMike — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:35:49 +0000

>On Friday evening we had a good turn-out of members, Thanks guys! We discussed the logistics of shipping the solar car and ourselves to Australia. Were hoping to get the support of airline companies or the air-force in the form of free or reduced-price tickets. Either way we will still need a LOT of money! For the actual race we will need a BARE minimum of 6 people to effectively race (more would be much better!)
>We talked about changing the car design a little. If we made the body around the vehicle cockpit extend farther back onto the car and eliminate the seam between the panels and the cockpit, we will reduce our aerodynamic drag (note that the car we are basing our design off of does this) Other minor body shape changes were discussed to improve aerodynamics. If we dont go too wild with this, we could greatly improve the performance of our car while only making it slightly harder to manufacture.
>We are SOOO close to finishing the old car. The list of issues we came up with is as follows:

*Add 3 members to cockpit frame to meet regulations, AND finish welding the roll-cage to the body.
*Repair and attach windshield
*Water Proof the Car- (almost done with this!)
*Meet Fastener spec. criteria (Almost done with this!)
*Vehicle HORN – It is already assembled, but the car bumper will need to be altered to install it
*Vehicle impact analysis-this is quite a project, if you are interested in being TAUGHT how to use 3D modeling and impact analysis programs (so you can help him), contact Mike (migraha@siue.edu)
*Sell advertising space on side of car
*Build the battery holders for batteries (they are already designed and a prototype is underway)

Also, we have a cool new stand-alone team poster that you will be able to see in the EB Atrium by the time school starts!

6/21/2010 Meeting Notes

ahelton — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:01:04 +0000

Hey all, we had a pretty good meeting Monday, and we have decided to go forward with the solar resource makeover. For those who don’t know this car, here’s a picture:

With this in mind we need to start booking it. But first things first.

we need to get the formula car teams frame (which we are going to base our design off of since their frame is very very similar to this car design. We will modify it to be lighter and fit our uses.
We need to put this car into inventor or abacas and do simulations. We MUST test if this car will tip in the figure 8 and the slalom. If it does, modify the wheel placements until it no longer tips.
Not required but we need to check cross winds to see if it will lift us like a leaf in a gentle breeze.
Once the frame is close to being finalized we need to get a model of the body done. I would like both a 3D model as well as a real world model, out of clay, wood, whatever so we can put it in a wind tunnel and see what it does first hand. The body should be tweaked from the original to provide the least amount of drag. This goes for our solar pannels in the back, we need to design them as aerodynamic as possible.
We are confirming with andy and steve that the gumstix driver support system will be the way to go. We are confirming that it will do everything we want it to do (we are pretty sure it will) this will give us a really neat LCD on the steering wheel for all of our driver functions.
The battery pack is getting redesigned to be more modular (which is what i wanted it to be in the beginning but you know how that goes) The world solar challenge only allows 22kg of lithium-poly batteries, so our current pack won’t do since its setup for 25kgs. We have enough batteries to make a 2nd 22kg pack so i’m working on redesigning that. Please let me know if anyones interested in helping with that.
The world solar challenging also has limited us to 3 m^2 of GaAs cells. thats not very much. This is one reason why we decided to go with the more modular design.
The water proofing on the old car is about finished, we also have panel stands installed. Just a few more things and the old car will be ready to go. Please let me know if you have time and want to finish the car up.

This summer has been fairly productive, lets keep it that way. I would like to thank everyone who came to the meeting and offered their input. I will schedule another meeting soon on a Friday or Saturday so some of our working members can join in and the discussion.

To-Do Poster, Notes 6/17/09

zacko — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:49:59 +0000

Dear Team,
For the rest of this week AND next week, I will be busy with school and will not be at the heating plant on Thursdays for meetings. (feel free to meet on Thursdays, or any other time you wish!).
I have finished a To-Do poster, and will be putting it in the heating plant. It is filled with sections of the new Regulations that need to be checked. There is also a copy of the new regulations, I think I left them on the desk. If you need something to do, please work on it! Still confused? Here’s some examples:
Example #1: Section 6.4.D states regulations concerning Safety Belts. Please read the section, and then look at our safety belts to see if they adhere to the standards listed. If so, please write “done” on the TO-DO poster. If not, please pencil in “working on it” and put your name.
Example #2: Section 6.4.A and Appendix C cover the Seating Angle. After reading Appendix C, please make a cardboard cutout of the measuring device shown in Appendix C and check the seating angle. Is our seat too reclined? Is it too upright? Please take the angle you measure, and write it in the “status” section of the TO-DO poster.
There are many tasks left to do. Please let me know if you need help or have questions, and I’ll see you in 2 weeks!

Meeting Notes from Friday May 1 2009

zacko — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:38:45 +0000

1. Good luck on finals!
2. Status of car
3. Future endeavors

Meeting Notes from Friday 4/17

zacko — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:00:56 +0000

1. As you can see, the new website is UP AND RUNNING!! THANK YOU DUSTIN!!!!!
2. The weights are in:
LF 95lbs (34.0%) RF 46lbs (16.4%)
LR 33lbs (11.8%) RR 105lbs (37.6%)
TOTAL WEIGHT: 280lbs

BATTERIES:
Lead Acid—45.0 lbs each * 8 batteries = 360lbs.
(this is the weight of BATTERIES ONLY in the 8-battery pack)
Lithium-Ion –62.41g each (0.13759 lb each)
If we build a pack with 416 cells, 416*0.13759 = 57.24 lbs.
360 -57.24 = 300.76 lbs WEIGHT SAVINGS
**this is the weight of the actual batteries, NOT including the weight of the materials/equipment used in the packs.

SOLAR PANELS:
27lbs each. 27*6 panels = 162lbs for the solar panels.

A special THANKS to Shawn and Grant for weighing the car!!!!

3. The microcontroller design(s) is/are coming along well. LOTS of work left to be done. We’re hoping to have two battery packs designed, built, and installed by the end of summer. Anyone (ECE or otherwise) who wants to volunteer time to this project and has not already spoken up, please LET ME KNOW! I will be happy to have (more) assistance!
4. The body design is coming along well. I will have pics of the progress up shortly! . ANYONE who wants to volunteer time to this project and has not already spoken up, please CONTACT MIKE (migraha@siue.edu) OR ME ( Zack zoester@siue.edu). We will be happy to have (more) assistance!
5. We need someone with a little extra time to sort through some paperwork, scan it into .pdf format, and upload it to the server. This will be an easy task / learning opportunity. Any volunteers?? Contact me (zoester@siue.edu).
6. The Body Mock-Up is not done yet, so our goal for this week and next week is to FINISH IT!!! It’s an easy project, it just takes some time! This week I will be at an IEEE event on Friday, April 24, and thus cannot host a meeting. But (of course), that doesn’t mean everyone else can’t meet to work on the car!! I’ll be at the plant working on it Tuesday evening (April 21). Anyone/everyone else can join me Tuesday, or come on Friday, or feel free to work on it WHENEVER YOU HAVE TIME!!!! If you would like to borrow my CD player/stereo, let me know.
7. Please pay special attention to the tab on this webpage titled “the team.” If anyone wants their name and details added or removed, please contact me (zoester@siue.edu) or Dustin (wedge@ageek.net). This page lists team members and tasks, please let us know if we need to update it for anything we may have forgotten! Thanks!

Meeting Notes From Friday 4/10

Dustin Sanders — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:11:43 +0000

MEETING THIS FRIDAY, 4/17/09, 2PM at the cooling plant!!!! This week should be exciting, as we have decided to have play-time with some cardboard! We’re going to make a full scale Moch-Up of a body, just to see what it looks like. Feel free to bring CD’s, I’m going to bring a CD-player so we can listen to some music while we work/play.
If the body Moch-Up goes well, maybe we can BUILD it (an actual body) using existing materials. What then?? We ADVERTISE!!!
–Advertising brings FUNDING. Funding buys a new motor. With a new motor, we can RACE.
–Advertising also brings new members! (Fall recruitment, etc.)
The NEW webpage is almost ready!!! Hoping to have it up and running, perhaps sometime this week. More to come…
The BATTERY PACK is a big undertaking. The microcontroller design will be started today (Tuesday). The design will be underway and partially or mostly finished by the end of semester. Hoping to have the new PACKS built and car re-wired by the end of summer.
Shawn Ryon will be bringing automotive SCALES (perhaps this Friday??) so we can get some preliminary Weight Measurements!!!
Jordan and Meghan are working on the Solar Panel test. BEFORE FRIDAY, feel free to look at the 2008 RULES on the body. www.ee.siue.edu follow “faculty” to Dr. Muren’s homepage. –>click the link to his WORK page, and then on to the rules!! (also, wear clothes you don’t mind getting DIRTY.)