Team Scheduling

[MercerFSAE C. Burch]

Hi. I'm a 3rd yr MAE student at Mercer University in Georgia and I'm trying to form a FSAE team here at the engineering school.

I was trying to put together a schedule that our team could follow to design, build, test, and race a car for the 2004 competition. I am not really sure how much time I need for testing, when what system of the car needs to be built or how much time it will take for each step. I've done considerable searching on these matters, short of calling another team, and have came up with not much other than to get the engine built and tested early in the process. If any experienced person out there could give me an idea of what kind of schedule their team runs, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Christopher D. Burch
-an engineer with a dream.

[MercerFSAE C. Burch]

Hi. I'm a 3rd yr MAE student at Mercer University in Georgia and I'm trying to form a FSAE team here at the engineering school.

I was trying to put together a schedule that our team could follow to design, build, test, and race a car for the 2004 competition. I am not really sure how much time I need for testing, when what system of the car needs to be built or how much time it will take for each step. I've done considerable searching on these matters, short of calling another team, and have came up with not much other than to get the engine built and tested early in the process. If any experienced person out there could give me an idea of what kind of schedule their team runs, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Christopher D. Burch
-an engineer with a dream.

[Wizard]

Rule 1: You need a motivated advisor!

Rule 2: Only 4-5 people will actually build the car.

Rule 3: No Girlfriends! If you have them don't worry, your going to loose them building a car anyway.

Rule 4: Start NOW!!!!!!!

Good Luck

"It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain..."

[Richard Lewis]

Hey bud, I think I can help you out a bit. We are a second year team, and it was about this time, 1 1/3 years before our first competition that we started our team. We sure had a lot to learn at that point, but there were things that I wish we had help with early on, they would have saved a lot of time and frustration, that is for sure.

At this point you need 5 or 6 100% committed members. Expect to lose sleep, weekends, grades etc. in the process. You have enough time to take a shot at rookie of the year for 2004, that was our goal, and I suggest you have the same goal. (for the record we finished 5th among rookies)

There are lots of things you should be doing at your school at this point. If your university is anything like ours, it takes 3-4 months to cut through red tape and get things done. Start looking for a workshop/storage facility. You will need space for assembly and parts. Check into machine shop access. You will find some of these things may be hard to get without anything to show people... I suggest you come up with a good business plan, put it on paper, and present that to people you want help from. Professionalism will take you VERY far, especially when you don't have anything else to show people. Sponsors like it, the university likes it, etc. So some research, and get a killer power point presentation done.... I'd suggest trying to keep it to 10 minutes, and do your best to get time to present at a faculty meeting. This is your one big chance... get the university in your corner early, and you will have a lot more sucess. I'd also try to find a professor that will go to bat for you, and has a bit of time to spend doing so. (hard to find) You need not get someone that knows lots about designing cars (though it may help) but simply someone that will act as a voice for your team within the faculty.

These first 4 months are crucial... spend them recruiting and researching. Don't expect to design anything that will be useful on the final car, design can wait, and should wait, until you have a good knowledge base. Plan a few fund raisers and events, and learn which members are committed for the dirty work and which aren't. Use your local media as much as you can to get your team known, but remember the media wants to see exciting things... we didn't get a lot of media support until we had solid models, pictures, or the actual car to show them. People like the visual stimulation.

I'd suggest you don't even begin design until about September, you'll be backtracking a lot if you start before. Learn what other teams do, and use their experience to your advantage. If 75 teams that have been to Detroit are using XX size wheels and tires, its likely a good place to start. You are going to have a lot of work ahead of you... spend your time wisely. Do everything in your power to finish the car 3 months ahead of the competition... you'll need every day of those 3 months to test, repair, prepare, remake, etc. There is a saying that one of the judges from FSAE likes, and it rings true: "If you are ready, the race begings at 10am Sunday. If you are NOT ready, the race begins at 10am Sunday." Be ready.

I can go on for hours, but here are some key points:
1) Get 1 or 2 people to Detroit 2003. Take a digital camera, and take ~1000 pictures of everything you come across. This will be your most valuable asset. Talk to teams, experience the comp. This is the most important thing I can list, find a way to get there. Its worth the cost. Take video.
2) Learn early who you can count on in your team, and who you can't. Challange people that you are unsure about to prove themselves. When crunch time comes, you need to have surrounded you with dependable, hard working, and committed people.
3) After some general research, (a few hours a day for a few months) find a committed person to head up each 'team'. I'd suggest 1 person for each of suspension, frame, engine, brakes/wheel ends, rear train, cockpit and body. They should continue research on those topics.
4) Have everyone on your team read the rules 5 times, cover to cover. Know them, breathe them, live them. It will save you a lot of time in the end.
5) The university you are at can be your best friend, or your worst enemy... you want the former! Strive to make that a solid relationship, through the staff, professors, whomever. The more posative attention you bring to their department, the more they will like you.
6) Use solid modelling to design your car... Start design in September, aim to finish before xmas. Don't start machining until your model is complete otherwise you will be making things 2 (or more) times.

Lots more to say, but that will get you started... Email me if you have specific questions. There is other literature on starting a new FSAE team on the web, and in older issues of Racecar Engineering and RaceTech magazines.

-------------------------
UVIC Formula SAE Team
http://members.shaw.ca/drax77/UVICFSAEcar.jpg
http://fsae.uvic.ca

[Michael Jones]

Hard to say with any accuracy without knowing the size and skill level of the organization; really it comes down to the team that you have in place. Start there and then plan out reasonable deadlines for the whole process - being a new team, it might be easier to make your first car a two-year effort.

Definitely send core people up to competition this year and get them talking to everyone. It's an incredibly educational experience - we recruit heavily in the spring and bring new team members to competition for this reason alone. They hit the ground running in September, whereas our fall recruits tend to take some time to warm up.

Otherwise, design first, during which you'd consider timeline development. For the first car, I'd say keep it as simple as possible. You won't finish top 20, but if you enter and finish all events in your first year, you'll be contending for the rookie team award anyway. Constrain yourself from overdesigning by setting hard interim and final deadlines. We finish by Thanksgiving, then move into manufacture with the end goal of a working first iteration by Feb. 1. Then, three-plus months of testing and refinement - a totally necessary and overlooked part of the process. Our Feb. 1 car would not finish endurance, guaranteed.

I'd also say that engine development is neither an early or excessively high priority. Frame and chassis development is - engine selection is important since you can't do a frame without knowing what's mounted in it, but engine testing and refinement can be a year-long process and indeed can be done rather late in the process with little difficulty; spring is our busiest engine development time in the end.

Hope this helps.

[James Waltman]

This article may help you:
http://www.motorsportsengineering.sae.org/motorsports/community/ebooks02.htm

For a timeline I recommend giving yourself a lot longer than you think it could take for each step. This year we have started using what we are calling gateways. We set up about 6 of them. They are deadlines spread throughout the year for things like chassis completion, engine running, and finally having a car complete with enough time for testing. These gateways have formal criteria and dates for completion. They are filed with our faculty advisor and our student SAE chapter (kind of our parent club). If we fail to make a gateway we go on a kind of probation. If we can make up the work be the next gateway (what we had not completed for the previous gateway and what is due for the current one) then we are ok. Two missed gateways mean we don't go to competition. The last gateway - complete car in time for testing - has no probation option except waiting until the next year to compete. We also have set up an informal schedule within each gateway to keep track of what needs to happen.

Find out what needs to happen so you can spend any money you have. For us it seems to take about 4-5 weeks to get a P.O. through the University. This is an eternity for us. What we generally do is have a team member buy what we need and then file for a reimbursement. That way we get what we need right away even though the reimbursement process can take 2-3 weeks.

James Waltman
waltmaj@cc.wwu.edu
http://dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae/
Formula SAE
Vehicle Research Institute at
Western Washington University

[Michael Jones]

We're nowhere near as formal in terms of deadlines, but this gateway concept is interesting. We set our own internal deadlines and enforce them internally as well; seems to work well, peer pressure is an amazing thing. Organizational systems theory would call these "punctuated equilibria" - crises points if you will. Certainly activity ramps up around our three design reviews, our Feb. 1 manufacturing deadline, and our testing/competition readiness reviews in April. Interim deadlines are key.

As for business administration, each school has its own system, but inevitably it's complex. We have a team of people who attend to administrative matters; some essentially full-time, some part-time in conjunction with their other activities. It's a good gig for rookie team members and esp. non-engineers - our last two business leaders have been from other schools, and they've been excellent. It's harder to find and convince non-engineers to get involved but when you find good ones, they'll contribute much more than you think - even in design and manufacturing, if you train them well.

[This message was edited by Michael Jones on January 15, 2003 at 06:31 PM.]

[vinHonda]

I agree with what Michael has said.

The key will be to never give up. Sometimes the struggles are immense. Some days you'll want to rip your hair out.

People will NOT take notice, and probably NOT even care. The best feeling is when the car hits the ground and fires up for the first time.

Have a goal. And get there. All the best to you.

Vinh

University of Toronto Formula SAE Racing Team
www.fsae.utoronto.ca (http://www.fsae.utoronto.ca)

[MercerFSAE C. Burch]

Thank you guys for your support.

Right now I've done lots of research on the competition, have a dedicated faculty advisor, and have a core group of about 8 people with about 25 others who are very interested and want to help.

We are going to bring a proposal before the dean of our engineering school on the 24th, and from there it is in the hands of the "high ups" in the administration as to wether we get a green light. (All sponsorship money for projects such as this at Mercer have to be raised by the University Advancement office, which would keep us from raising money on our own.)

Our engineering school has participated in projects like solar car racing before, but we haven't had anything like this for about four or five years now. It is a challenge that I am looking forward to for several reasons and that I feel would really make my school engineering career really mean something. So I hope to have ya'lls continued help as we gear up to compete in 2004.

Thanks again
-Christopher D. Burch
An engineer with a dream

[Charlie]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Richard Lewis:
I'd suggest you don't even begin design until about September, you'll be backtracking a lot if you start before. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't mean to nit-pick, because I know it took a long time to type your post and I wholeheartedly agree with most. But not this statement. Design is an iterative process, and you will a lot of backtracking no matter what. By designing, even if you end up redesigning, you will learn a lot. And there are lots of parts such as uprights, differential housings, steering racks, etc that you can begin to brainstorm and get a baseline design down that the rules won't affect much.

-Charlie Ping
Auburn University FSAE 1999-present
http://www.auburn.edu/~pingiii/2002FSAE/carblank.jpg

[Michael Jones]

quote:

Design is an iterative process, and you will a lot of backtracking no matter what.

I'd have to agree with Charlie on this one -- you can come up with initial sketchy ideas very early. We have such a sketchy brainstorming session on the day we leave competition among all returning members, and my ride back to Ithaca was filled with tech talk, some of which led to new ideas that were at least researched some early in the school year.

For new teams, I'd say start now. Can't hurt - of course, look at the rules and the proposed changes for 2004 in making your deliberations. But if you aim for simplicity, you'll probably be within the letter of the law anyway.

As for waiting for the rules to be released, we've seen on two different instances this year (rain tires and driver bay triangulation) that the rules are prone to change anyway.

[Richard Lewis]

I suppose what I wrote wasn't enitrely what I was thinking. We started design, atleast preliminary, long before September. (we decided on things like wheelbase, track width, wheel size, etc) We had parts ordered that we knew we were going to use. (torsen diff, for example) But between September and Novemeber, we machined 2, 3, and 4 different designs of certain parts. What I meant to convey is don't machine until design is done, but somehow I lost my train of thought while I typed.

One of the best moves we made was to construct a prototype mild steel frame, conforming with the rules. We built the frame, learned how to notch and weld, did some measurements, then redesigned it completely. This was around September. Its very time consuming to built things more than once, so its my advice to avoid it as best you can.... Except as far as the frame goes. Best $120 we spent on last years car was cut up into little bits shortly after making it. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

-------------------------
UVIC Formula SAE Team
http://members.shaw.ca/drax77/UVICFSAEcar.jpg
http://fsae.uvic.ca

[Eddie Martin]

I'd start as soon as you can. Use all the cars at the competition as a baseline. Build a mock up of the frame, it will give you a good idea of sizes and how you can get the motor in and out. Lock in a type of engine, for dimensions i'd go for a small track and a longer wheelbase, as it will help with packaging.

For our first year car we ran a phase 1 car. It was ready 4 months before the competition and had a stock engine just stock carbs off the bike and no restrictor, it also had some heavy components that we knew we were going to replace later, no bodywork etc. Phase 2 came a month or so later with lighter stuff, bodywork, fuel injection etc.

It was extremely important to get a car running and start learning. It gave us a chance to see what would break, you will break things, and repair them before the competition. It also gave us a change to put people in the drivers seat, don't pick drivers on how much work they do, but how fast they are. It is hard to do but necessary. And just to end, anything is possible you can finish in the top 20 just keep it simple, get it ready early and test, test, test and then test some more.

Regards
Eddie Martin
UOW Racing
www.uow.edu.au/eng/racing (http://www.uow.edu.au/eng/racing)

[Michael Jones]

Frame mockups are a great idea...we do them out of wood and mockup general dimensions of all parts to figure out packaging issues well ahead of anything being built. Not all that hard to do and you save a lot of redesign later.

---
Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[ANDONI]

We are a 2nd year team. Started maybe 1.5 - 2 years before the 2002 competition. A few hints:

* First off all, believe in the pi rule. If you think something is goint to take X time, multiply that by pi.

Real time = 3.14159*X


* START NOW...............and

* THINGS WILL BRAKE, NO MATTER WHAT....}

* forget tv, girlfriends, too many beers,
beach, etc.....

* faculty should become a friend.

See you in pontiac...

Andoni Mazeika
www.formulasaeusb.com (http://www.formulasaeusb.com)

[Michael Jones]

* forget tv, girlfriends, too many beers,
beach, etc.....

A hidden benefit of Cornell's team. Local TV sucks, the girls are all from Long Island (read: negative personality, retarded, ugly and prudish - an impressive combination, in the same way motorcycle accidents are impressive), the bars close at 1am but people don't know how to drink properly anyway, and if there was a beach, you'd be freezing your nether regions off on it right now (present temp = -16C).

Temptation Island it ain't.

---
Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[EliseS2]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Jones:
* forget tv, girlfriends, too many beers,
beach, etc.....

A hidden benefit of Cornell's team. Local TV sucks, the girls are all from Long Island (read: negative personality, retarded, ugly and prudish - an impressive combination, in the same way motorcycle accidents are impressive), the bars close at 1am but people don't know how to drink properly anyway, and if there was a beach, you'd be freezing your nether regions off on it right now (present temp = -16C).

Temptation Island it ain't.

---
Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>



Wow, that would explain why Cornell does so well.