For week 8, we are ordering all the parts in order to prepare an assembly for the mechanism and mount. For the airplane mechanism, the preliminary design is finished, but until the parts come in and the casing is designed, the design can’t be scaled appropriately yet. The motor and bearings are purchased, and the ESC needs to be purchased. …
We’ve only about 2 weeks away from finals! Our team is continuing to make progress towards our quarter goals. Here’s what we’ve done this week: The mechanical design team is still improving the new ULB mechanism design and ordering the new materials. For our other mechanism, we 3D-printed our base designs but found that the material kept fracturing because of …
Last weekend, the FSAE Electric Racecar team presented the racecar at the UROP Symposium. The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program has been a major supporter of the FSAE Electric team for years. We appreciate their support, so the FSAE Electric Racecar team was happy to bring the racecar to the UROP Symposium and answer questions. The UROP Symposium is a chance …
Last week, we were able to test the car. A running car is a major step for the FSAE Electric Racecar team. Comparing schedules, we are significantly ahead of last year’s racecar. At the rate that the car is improving, the FSAE Electric Racecar is in a good position to meet our goal of placing in the top 5 at …
Week 6 and 7 both comprised of picking up the pace on our project. The airplane wing and horizontal has been reinforced with fiberglass. The airplane mount has been 3D printed and we are awaiting the off-the-shelf parts for the bearing, spring, and linear rod. The airplane mechanism parts have been purchased and the housing and the adjustments to the …
We have pretty much finished manufacturing optimizations for the quadflapper. Our current quadflapper can be seen on the attached image. Now, the next step is to finish the manufacturing of one of the active pitching mechanisms and then apply this mechanism onto the individual “flappers” on the quadflapper. We are hoping to have the manufacturing finished by week 9 and …
We’re onto Week 6! The FWMAV team continues to work hard towards our goals. Here are the accomplishments for the week: The mechanical design team is continuing the design of our new ULB prototype. We created a new chassis for the new gears and redesigned the linkages. We also decided to use acrylic sheets for the linkages and ordered the …
The mission demonstration is a bit over a month away and the mission paperwork is due. The fact sheet and Technical Report thus needs either accurate to competition specs or closely accurate extrapolation of the UAV’s systems, weight, and other specs. It is vital to the success of the project as it is worth 20% of the total score of …
The airplane mechanism’s CAD design has been completed in SolidWORKS. The next objective is to formally derive the equations for the flapping as a crank and rocker mechanism in order to determine the appropriate proportion for oscillation since the airplane aileron and elevators don’t have a large maximum due to the flimsiness of the material. After that, the small linkages …
Our new lithium-ion batteries have finally arrived. Up until this point, we have been using heavy and relatively inefficient LiFePO4 cells to store energy for the car. With the new lithium-ion batteries, we can reduce the weight of our battery box by almost 100 lbs while maintaining similar performance to the LiFePO4 cells. This weight reduction is from a number …
