fsae car build time

[Vincent Cice]

hey. we are a new team and we are trying to get an estimate on the time it takes to design and build the fsae car. none of us has any past experience with fsae. we do have experience with pro-e and solid works. a very general estimate will help. thanks

[Mike Cook]

Always two weeks longer than you have.

[Simon Dingle]

Last year we spent 8 weeks start to finish at about 1200 man hours per week.

[exFSAE]

Design - 1 semester.

Build - 1 semester.

Generally speaking, if you plan to be done in February.. you'll be done in May.

[Adambomb]

Put together an estimate, all together about 150,000 man-hours a year.

[Simon Dingle]

haha misread your question there, my answer was just for the build time. We start design work (at least concepts) immediately after competition, so about a year.

Also, everything takes longer than you think...

[Vincent Cice]

thanks a lot everyone.

[Mikey Antonakakis]

Until you get really good at knowing how fast you do things (will take a couple years), a good estimate is that it takes about 4 times as long to build something as you think it will. Obviously this is different for different people, but I think that's about right on average.

[DanVaan]

Remember the rule of pi. Take your estimate for the time it takes and multiply it by 3.14159 and you will have a much better guess.

[Mike Cook]

I think the rule of pi applies to raw materials as well....always buy pi times as much as you need because will screw it up at least twice.

[Ockham]

I think the rule of pi applies to raw materials as well....always buy pi times as much as you need because will screw it up at least twice.

Which is the same as the thumb rule "third time lucky," within experimental error. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[Vittorio]

Adambomb, I think you're joking or you made a typing mistake. I would estimate at least 15,000 hours, probably 40,000 but not 150,000. My estimate would also agree with Simon: 8*1200=9600 only for manufacturing; consider design, test and so on, you get 2-2.5(-3) times that, so around 25,000 hrs.

Vittorio

[flavorPacket]

I also come up with an average of 10,000-12,500 man hours for the build.

[t21jj]

I was told they came up with about 15,000hrs when I joined the team back in 2005. I know nothing about this new number.

[Adambomb]

Originally posted by Vittorio:
Adambomb, I think you're joking or you made a typing mistake. I would estimate at least 15,000 hours, probably 40,000 but not 150,000. My estimate would also agree with Simon: 8*1200=9600 only for manufacturing; consider design, test and so on, you get 2-2.5(-3) times that, so around 25,000 hrs.

Vittorio

D'OH! Yeah, it would appear so. I did the math on it a few years ago, if I wrote it down somewhere I don't remember where that is. In hindsight that does sound awfully high...I'm guessing Tyler has a better memory than me, 15,000 does sound more realistic. But for fun, let's run those numbers again:

Assume you have a "base core" of 3.5 members (on average) that "live" in the shop. They spend about 75 hours a week in there doing actual work (i.e. not screwing off, lighting fires, making cannons, etc.). They maintain this pace (naturally with some variance based on class load, how close competition is, etc.) for about 9 months. So for your "base core" you have 3.5 men x 75 hours/week x 52 weeks/year x 0.75 years = 10,240 man-hours.

You have one dedicated fool that spends the whole summer in the shop, but he probably has a regular job, so he spends "only" 30 hours a week in the shop over the summer. For your "dedicated fool" you have 1 man x 30 hours/week x 52 weeks a year x 0.25 years = 390 man-hours

From there it's a bit harder to guess, as participation drops exponentially, but it's probably safe to say that every team leader outside the "base core," which for us comes out to another 5 people (including a couple of dedicated non-team-leaders) spends 7 hours a week in the shop over the school year. So for your "outer core" you have 5 men x 7 hours/week x 52 weeks/year x 0.75 years = 1365 man-hours.

Then you have some random newbies, people that need their hand held for everything, or else just basically come in and distract you more than anything (no, I'm not cynical http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif ). As much as you would rather forget they existed sometimes, 5% of the large number of people in this group will one day become team leaders (note that in fact, the newbies spend more hours a week in the shop than your "outer core" team leaders). So this is basically your "training expense" for continuity's sake. For that I'm not thinking of individuals, but estimate that on any given week 2 newbies will be around about 10 hours a week, give or take, throughout the year. So for your "newbies" you have 2 men x 10 hours a week x 52 weeks/year x 0.75 = 780 newbie-hours.

All together, that's 12,780 man-hours.

[kapps]

You forgot to add the most important part... the 2 weeks between finals ending and competition.

This is the time where everyone (core, fools, newbies, and random) are all at the shop...at the same time...all the time. This makes your average 15 person team add another 5000 man-hours. Usually this number is found by taking each core person and fool and multiplying their 24 hour day by 2 because the newbies and random people are still pretty useless or distracting.

[exFSAE]

Originally posted by kapps:
You forgot to add the most important part... the 2 weeks between finals ending and competition.

This is the time where everyone (core, fools, newbies, and random) are all at the shop...at the same time...all the time.

Not sure if I remember things quite being like that...

[lithiumdeuteride]

The build time for the Terran FSAE car is 15 million seconds, and it costs 50,000 minerals and 30,000 vespene gas. It has a very fast movement rate, but unfortunately only 5 HP, so it dies to a single attack from any unit. There is also a 50% chance that it will destroy itself without being attacked at all.