Just curious as to how many NC hours all these bits and pieces are going to cost you on the cost report. Ever considered casting?

Full boar racing

Well, a Haas VF-2SS appears to be able to make an upright in about 3 minutes:

Download WMV

Yes, we're asking for one this year

CNC'd parts are stupid cheap if you use proper machining times. Aluminum @ $.75/lb, CNC time at $75 an hour...and like Denny said say 3 minutes for an upright...you start to get the picture. If you use plenty of soft jaws (since they don't get into the cost report) and nest your parts you save on material and time. Besides, casting isn't always a great option for low volume production runs...

The car looks great...What is the final weight?

Travis Garrison
UW FSAE

Even though casting is not a great option for low volume, we (luckily) have a great casting supplier who makes low volume components for us. We have access to a rapid-protype machine which is also a good thing
We now have cast Magnesium pedal box, pedals, rear uprights and shifter paddles. Casting also looks awesome on the cost report

If you can, investigate it. It has really helped us this year.

Hi there,

No I guess we didnt really consider casting. What sort of mechanical properties are you getting with (presumably heat treated) castings?

I think next years adelaide team is considering using some of the parts on our car as patterms to cast up something similar.

3 minute uprights? what the hell?

As for our machined parts in our cost report - I havent gotten around to doing them yet.

Any pics Mick? Sounds like some nice stuff...

-Travis

quote:

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Originally posted by Denny Trimble:
Well, a Haas VF-2SS appears to be able to make an upright in about 3 minutes:

http://www.haascnc.com/news/new_files/VF-2SS.wmv

Yes, we're asking for one this year

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Shizzle! That tool changer is insane. Not only that but their program wasted 30-40 seconds deburring. You could pay a freshman 5 bucks and hour to do that.

I want one too.

i've put a couple of pics of our casting in the photo gallary

Geez, that mill is amazing.

Those castings look pretty nice. What is your wheel damper motion ratio? Last years adelaide team struggled with that using a pullrod and very inclined upper wishbones. They were almost parallel.

quote:

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Originally posted by mike240z:
We have really tried to focus on winning the bling bling competition. Reece is now our permanent polish boy and we even have non-structural carbon contact. I am pretty sure that everyone in the team would like West End Draught if we win, no-one really likes that other SA beer.

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???? ok fantastic!@

What kind of trouble (if any) did you guys have casting magnesium? My impression was it's not the easiest material to work with, expecially casting.

Casting magnesium isn't that hard, and the foundry we use specialises in this material also which has helped. Mechanical properties vary from foundry to foundry and the best way to figure these out is breaking stuff. As long as you consult with the foundry early in the design process and ensure the material will flow through the mould you shouldn't have any dramas. A few issues we did have early on were porosity and cracking but this can be ironed out by refining your runner/riser placement.

We did have a teenie problem with magnesium swarf catching fire at one stage when the wheel centres were being tidied up. The guy on the lathe was turning it pretty fast and a bit caught fire and set the rest off that was in the catch tray, so there's a nice black mark in the tray now!

We just fatigue tested our cast rear upright this morning to roughly two seasons worth of racing (20,000 cycles at +/- 7kN), no cracks, no problems.

"...its not really an engineering material, its more like cheese"
--Gary Savage, BAR TD on magnesium

anyone else finished their cars or is it all secret?

We had a successful car launch night last night, there's pics of R04 in the gallery section. I'll get around to posting the herald sun article when I can.

quote:

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Originally posted by Denny Trimble:
Well, a Haas VF-2SS appears to be able to make an upright in about 3 minutes:

http://www.haascnc.com/news/new_files/VF-2SS.wmv

Yes, we're asking for one this year

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Actually, it appears to make two uprights in about 3 minutes (well, mostly, it seems to forget about the other at some point about 3/4 through, but I'd have to watch it again, and it's NOT THAT interesting.) That tool changer is cool, and that facing mill is taking BIG, BIG cuts right at the start....googly.....

quote:

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Originally posted by Colin:
you don't start a competition you don't think your going to win

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Why not... the experience is the reason I'm in this. If we finish top 50 I'm happy.

Could you post a couple of pics of these uprights that are made in 90 seconds a piece, minus the freshman deburring time. I'd love to see what that process is producing since we dont have access to a machine nearly that nice.


Cheers

I don't know if there are pictures, that looks like a "demo part" for a tradeshow or something. Plus, they have twice as many toolchanges as they need just to show off the toolchanger.

They might be doing two sides of the same part, which would make the total cycle time for each part 3 minutes.

HAHAHAHA. I just watched the video. That rocks. I would trade in old family members for one of those . Someone else posted that they were finishing one half of an upright in 3 hrs. I think we can do better than that but not a lot. When you cost something out in your report, do you have to cost out actual times or can you cost out "assuming that we had this tool". hehe

Cheers