quote:

group of smart high school kids with time to go through engineering books and a good teacher could do a good portion of the engineering that FSAE teams do on their cars.

KU, might want to take a gander at that one again.

Hey,
I am one of those A-hole teachers that would love to have a group of students compete in a project like this, and for simplicity I would lean towards a go-kart or a high milage vehicle (both of which have comps for HS). But, and hear me out on this one, do you really think that the first years you have on your team designing any component of the car are better than these HS students. Three months before you got those bed wetters on your team they were worried about who they were going to prom with (or without).

And what about the non engineer STUDENTS (emphasizing that we are all students) that work on the cars (everyones). The business, marketing, teaching, plastics, machining, and other majors that are involved. Are you telling me that on most teams where these individuals have taken the time to learn (the software's, the design analysis, and everything else that goes into the design) don't know what they are doing and that you would rather have them sit it out.

I think that anyone that has doubts about a HS team beating a college team should take a look at the last 60 places for FSAE and tell me that a group of determined kids with the right facilities can't beat them. I say Bullshit. Obviously if you doubt this you had a shitty Technology Education facility compared to the ones available to some schools, and you don't realize the possibilities.

I for one would rather have a group of Hike SKoolers than the group of children at college that tell you that they got better things to work on than FSAE.

Oh yeah, forgot- CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF (TRANSLATIONS-DON'T MAKE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT BY SPEWING VERBAL DIARRHEA)

Bill Kunst

Bill thanks for the positive reply, and the support. we originally looked into go-kart and super mileage competitions, but their just not the same as FSAE.

quote:

Oh yeah, forgot- CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF

Ice Cube fan, Bill?

I dunno. HS FSAE team is cool. I'm glad you guys are working on it, and with the right determined kids you could definately score fairly well. But at the same time, I'm wary of it, for the same reasons that were pointed out earlier. Four years of college education and being down working on the car, you learn a LOT, but still only a fraction of what's out there. So I'm wary of the caliber of engineering and analysis at the HS level. But hey, let em compete. Have the students grilled by the design judges just like everyone else. If they score well, more power and more props to em.

I am the faculty advisor for Carter Student Engineers.
We applied to bring our car to the competition to display it only and have it pass tech inspection. We asked to have the car would participate in static events only. We wish to prove that we are 100% rules compliant. We are aware of the insurance and safety concerns of this event and we wish to be a fully positive contribution. Carter Student Engineers is not about putting Cornell a lap down in the Enduro. Perhaps when the students get to University they can give it a try.
High school students are fully capable of engineering quality products. In my province there are no formal engineering courses taught in High School. How can we expect students to be capable of engineering when they have not been taught? Given the challenges our domestic auto industry faces from Asian competition and the fact that China is in the process of training its future engineers on pirated software to work at rock bottom labor rates the only niche left for us will be top end design work. We are going to have to make a quantum leap in our education to hold on to this area.
Teaching is a great career and I would encourage many of you to consider it. We need you.
My goal is to provide knowledge of good design practices for the students. In a recent example a student showed me a linkage design. It was nicely thought out but was in single shear. It took all of 30 seconds to point out an example of single and double shear on last year's car. Now he understands.
I attempt to provide relevant information for each area of design. The student's design components without wasting an enormous amount time just trying to find sources of information about what they need. I then do quality control.
My students have not been allowed to achieve their goal of being allowed to present their car to the design judges at the SAE event in Michigan this year. As their culminating activity they will be presenting the car for technical inspection to our title sponsor. This is a man who as a youth worked for Fangio and knew Colin Chapman. He started his own company in 2001 and now employs over 3800 people. No one will bluff this man. The students must understand their work.
We will apply to be allowed to statically display our car at the Michigan event and pass Tech inspection for the 2007 event.
Our team will attend the Michigan event to observe and learn. Please help the students with their technical questions and let the organizers know of your support for our team if you agree with our objectives.
Regards
Bryan

If my high school had let us build a formula car, I might have actually cared about high school for longer than the 2 seconds it took for the principal to hand me a diploma.

Just from the pictures on the the website I can say that you are FAR better equiped than we are at a university level. SAE is the bastard child of our university, and recieves little more than a dark corner to work in. I would also guess that your budget (however low you may think it is) is much greater than ours.

That being said, I have no doubt that a high school team could make a formula car compete.
An engineering degree is not required to build a race car, but god does it help.
A formula car is far more complicated and intricate than a go kart or high mileage car. And, a lot more dangerous. Anyone can weld some pieces of steel together, but that is a very minor part of designing a race car. I question how well highschool students understand torsional rigidity, FEA (not the fancy computer software, I mean finite element method), suspension geometry, spring rates, damping coeficients, material properties, or safety factors.

PS You guys better un-pop your collars if you want to be on our formula team.

MAGNIFICENT

I concur with several of the above voices from around the world. If the high school I attended had something like this I would be a different person today. I would not have dropped out, built a sailboat, sailed down the coast of Mexico and over to Hawaii and ended up a charter boat captain on Maui for 10 years.

And now, many-many years later I am designing my own FSAE car. No, I am not in school, I race AUTOCROSS and I think the FSAE cars are perfect! Small, light, fast, and fun. My Miata is nice, but not a serious race car and since it is my daily ride I don't want to turn it into a serious racer. I no longer live in the heat and sun of Hawaii and yes, I get checked for skin cancer every 3 months.

But, since I picked up a wrecked Suzuki 600 sportbike and a donor car (Subaru Justy) for the hubs, brakes, diff, axles, and everything else I can use I am designing my own Locost FSAE car. True, it will be much heavier than your cars as I do not have a machine shop to mill out custom uprights and all the other fancy (expensive) parts. But, I am not competing against any of you. I will be the only one in the FSAE class at our events. And if that is not fast enough for the FTD (fast time of day) then I will drop in the Suzuki GSXR 750 motor I just got. Heh-heh-heh and I will move into the SCCA A-Modified class then.

Also like you I am planning to build more than one car as I know I will learn a lot from the first one.

What did you use to get the power from the counter shaft to the diff on your car? I am trying now to come up with a simple (read affordable) system that is short so I do not have to put the engine any farther forward. Like your car, my motor sits longitudinaly so there is a straight line from the countershaft to the diff. I was thinking of adapting a CV joint but there must be a better way.

Keep up the High School leadership! I hope more HS follow your lead.

I did attend University finally by the way, although not for a degree, but to learn CAD.

James

last year we designed a 2 piece drive shaft splined to the output shaft on the motor and the other end splined to the diff, it bolts together and sandwiches the rear brake. this year we did the same thing just much shorter

you must've paid a lot just to learn CAD thru the university. Ever try getting the guys in that university to teach you instead? Im sure you dont have to pay as much.

And, usually, you dont need a class for CAD. But if you've never had any CAD experience, a first few intro is good, but afterwards, you can pretty much learn on your own.

Even a massive program like CATIA isnt that hard to learn for doing simple CAD. I think it's the question of whether you have the time to learn it or not becoz any CAD takes a couple of hours every day to get use tu.

Good points RiNaZ,

Like many of us over 50, I was a computer novice. I talked with several people doing CAD drafting and most said the same thing, "buy it and teach yourself". However, I have learned that usually when you teach yourself something it is slower and you learn lots of bad habits.

I compared prices for various schools and ended up taking the beginning AutoCAD course at the local University. It cost less than the computer I bought to practice with at home. I was hired by an engineering firm before the semester was over so it worked out very well. I am currently a Design Drafter V and I use AutoCAD 8+ hours a day on a huge variety of projects. (no houses)

Over the years I have taken classes for skiing, flying, driving, racing, diving, dancing, motorcycle street riding (after racing dirt bikes for 30+ years), autocross course design, and many other interests, and in all areas I have friends who were self taught. Every one of them would have improved if they had taken a class with a real instructor, and most would have avoided serious problems that came from their learning "experience".

However, this thread is about a high school FSAE car design/build team. I strongly disagree with those who say that high school students are not capable of designing and building a safe, competitive car. I know that some students are capable of great things and if given a direction and (very importantly) an interesting goal, they can astound people.

After all, what makes a college team SO MUCH smarter than a high school team? Pride? Or perhaps the drinking parties? We have several EIT's (engineer in training) here that have a degree, but no common sense design ability. They come up with the most complicated and often lousy designs that would never be built. So everyone learns and that starts with reading. Reading what others have done before and understanding why it worked or why it did not. Then, after a thorough understanding of the theory and practice, build on that with new ideas and directions. Not everything will be an improvement though. Do you remember the 6 wheel (Benneton?) Formula 1 car? They spent a ton of money to see if that would be an improvement over the competition. It wasn't they learned. And now we have Audi with the Diesel Sports Racer. So many said "It will never be competitive" and "It won't work". Now look at the results! Not that I am eager to go out and buy a diesel sportscar, I do appreciate the new thinking and possibilities.

After examining pictures of all the entries in the FSAE events for the past few years that I could find, I see that some teams do not have a basic understanding of chassis design, which anyone can get by reading the many books available. So what? They are learning something, even if it is only what not to do.

As I look at the pictures of the Carter Students car I see many excellent design solutions and original thinking. The build quality appears in the pictures to be first rate too.

It is true that a High School team could be just building to the design of the instructor. Just as some Univerity teams now probably get more than a little direction. However, I have seen or read about high school teams building boats, houses, kit cars, and even at least one built a Kitfox airplane. True, they did not design them but they still learned a lot in the process. However, as for Carter Student Engineers, it does sound like the students are resonsible for the design of their car.

So I say GOOD ON YOU! and I do hope the FSAE sees the benfits to have you enter officially.

People should'nt be making "assumptions" and biased remarks just because we are High School students. Our team captain made this thread for suggestions on a technical basis, not to be judged on our motives and education.

Thank you.

Gianluca
Business Director, CSE

Hey guys, i think its awesome that high school team is making a car. Im actually from not too far from carter and my sister goes there (live in king city).

All of this talk about high schoolers not being able to engineer anything is bollocks. Im in first year and i have (albeit with a bit of instruction) designed and build quite a few things on this years car, with no previous design experience. granted i have also learned a great deal of skills as far as fabricating and design goes.

The times where you will learn the most are when you design something, build it, and then find out the hard way that it doest work the way you wanted it to. (happens to the best of us).

I hope you guys will be able to compete in the future, because the harder the judges grill you on your design choices, the more you will learn. I look forward to seeing you guys at comp this year and (if its done) would love to see this years finished car from you guys.

your welcome to come visit the shop, im sure our teacher wont mind at all.

quote:

Originally posted by Gianluca:
your welcome to come visit the shop, im sure our teacher wont mind at all.

i'd like to extend that invitation to anyone on these forums who is in the GTA or surrounding area, who would like to see our progress or has doubts about our capabilities, come over and see for yourselves.

ill stop by for sure, im finished on the 29th and will be back for a week. Id love to see the progress.

hey stefan, i was at baja east competition a week ago and i was volunteering for the carnage crew. I saw and hang out with some of the Queens baja guys. The car that they had was very fast and i think they finished within the top 3. And then, there was this car from sherbrooke univ., that car was fast too. I timed them and i think their average lap time is well within 10 mins range.

But then there was this rumour going around saying that the queens guy didnt fabricate any of the parts of the car. They cant even if they want to becoz of university policies and tools being a liability and such.

I also heard that even the sherbrooke car wasnt built by the guys in the team.

Do you guys have that same problem?

rinaz, as far as i know this is not true. We have a fully functioning machine shop with 3 new Haus CNC mills, a few CNC lathes and a few manual machines. Both formula and baja do most of our own fabrication. I know that baja this year machined theyre own gearbox. They spend a lot of time in the machine shop so afaik they do quite a bit of their own fabrication.

As for formula, this is also true. We do alot of our own fabrication in the machine shop. The machinists here will help if help is required but the work is done mainly by the students.

Here at Queens in mechanical engineering there is a second year practical course that takes place in the machine shop and teaches use of lathes, mills (both CNC and manual), welding, use of plasma cutter (very cool), and some other machines that weve got in the shop, so there arent any liability issues that i know of.

quote:

Originally posted by RiNaZ:

But then there was this rumour going around saying that the queens guy didnt fabricate any of the parts of the car. They cant even if they want to becoz of university policies and tools being a liability and such.

I also heard that even the sherbrooke car wasnt built by the guys in the team.

Do you guys have that same problem?

RiNaz (and anyone who heard this), I don't know where those ridiculous rumours came from but they are just that. Just to backup what my team mate is saying, Baja and us definately do all of our own fabrication. As far as Baja goes, our school has an excellent team and the machine and metal work they do is above and beyond what most formula teams pull off, perhaps this very high quality of work is the reason this rumour started? who knows.
As far as our team goes, i personally fabricated all of the hubs, rotors, uprights, spindles, a arms, upper ball joints, and knuckles. so yeah, no outsourcing here. we do it all.

oh and i think a high school FSAE team is a great idea, and i'm definately looking forward to seeing them at comp, if only to go through tech and static events. Another great thing about the team is if any of them decide to come to queen's (great school by the way) they will a) bring a good base of knowledge and b) reduce the number of times all the upper years are asked how fast does it go, or why are there no paddle shifters, or any of those types of questions which we all love. but yeah, Carter students are definately welcome in our paddock at comp, we'll be the ones with the wicked clear coated carbon fibre monocoque.

John Valerio
Queen's FSAE

one more thing,
sean or gianluca, was your car the one at the 05 UofT shootout? if so, how come it stayed on the trailer? i was looking forward to seeing it run.

John Valerio
Queen's FSAE

Yes our car was at the U of T shoot out, unfortunately since we had not passed tech at any previous SAE event they did not have insurance coverage for us, therefore we could not run the car.