And on the third day...

Monday was a quiet day in the lab. I was the only person that was able to make it in, but progress was still made. Before coming to the lab, I searched around town for a store that carried a spackling compound recommended to us by Dr. Engelmann. After I found it, I returned to the lab and applied it to the boards for our spray booth. The boards also received a final coating of paint. While the paint dried, I began hand sanding the entire outside edge of the plug so that the chamfer meets cleanly with the edge of the sculpted part of the plug.

Happy Holidays from all of us here at Sunseeker!

Bronco Pride,
Joshua

Work Day Deux

Josh and I worked on finishing up a few of the projects and making small changes to them. Josh fitted the last roof section and I put some primer on the 1x8 boards. We did some more cleaning for Doc's younger son's birthday party. I think he was having a good time because when we left they were laughing and yelling in the lab. More planning was done for this week.

Bronco Pride,
Nick

First Work Day of the Break

Josh, Hau, Byron and myself made a lot of progress in the lab today. Josh and Hau figured out the last critical measurements for the booth and assembly frame. At the same time Bryon and I added the chamfer to the edge of the plug. I started with a rough cut to get most of the material away. Byron came after and sanded it smooth. We manged to get all of the roof sections done except for one. Of course that is the one that will be the hardest to set in place. Byron sanded the boards and prept them for tomorrow's initial coating of paint and filler.

Bronco Pride,
Nick

Special Delivery

The road conditions finally gave the team the opportunity it needed. Saturday morning Abe, Keith, Nick, and myself made the hour long drive north to Grand Rapids. At about 8:30am, after cleaning off the van and making sure everything else was ready to go, we hit the road. An hour later, we pulled into the parking lot of Van's Pattern, where Mitch was waiting for us. It was a very unassuming building from the outside, but the interior was absolutely amazing! After a quick tour of the workshop, we were shown our plug. It was amazing to see it in person! Our greatest appreciation goes out to the employees of Van's for helping to make our project come to life. We quickly loaded up the plug, make sure it was secure for the trip, and then headed home. To our great relief, the plug now sits safe and sound in the lab, waiting for the fabrication process to begin.

Bronco Pride,
Joshua

Delayed

The lab was rather quite Tuesday night due to a lack of work to be done. The trip planned for last Friday to pick up the plug from Grand Rapids had to be canceled due to poor road conditions, and this has caused obvious delays in progress. We have rescheduled for later this week but the approaching storm may once again cause us grief.

The team members spent last night doing a few odd jobs around the lab. The table inside the sanding tent was cleared off. A few last solar panels were sanded down, washed, and boxed for the electrical team. (This time we really do have them all done!) A little more progress was made on the spray tent's frame. The major highlight of the night though was the installation of the ventilation duct for the sanding tent. Using 3 sheets of stiff, foam insulation, a few rolls of duct tape, and a wooden pallet, several team members built an impressive duct from the sanding tent to the nearby ventilation shaft. It is a perfect example of "duct tape engineering". It may not look pretty but it works remarkably well!

After that was all said and done, those few members that were still present gave the shop a quick cleaning. Some discussion was held about the cosmetic's of the new car, and the plans for the team during Winter Break. Since finals are next week, the team is not planning any more meetings for the semester. But work on the car will not stop by any means. Once finals week ends, some team members will return to the lab and make up ground by putting in longer work shifts over the break, but this will be discussed more in next week's post. Until then, good luck to all students on finals!

Bronco Pride,
Joshua

Prep Work

What a busy day! Tuesday night showed a great turnout as we made some final preparations for the plug's arrival. The plastic screen around the tent was sealed and hopefully we will have a ventilation duct for the tent pieced together soon. The large trailer was given some quick modifications for the trip up to Grand Rapids to pick up the foam plug from our friends at Van's Pattern Corp. (Hopefully the added support will provide enough stability and protection for the trip back!!!) Several team members spent most of the work shift down in the machine shop trimming some 2x4's. The boards will be used to build a temporary addition to the ventilation hood. Meanwhile, the electrical team was busy making themselves familiar with the code that ran previous cars. Now they will begin the intensive process of modifying and rewriting the codes for use in this year vehicle.

While we were finishing up the boards, a few members sitting in the Plastics Lab got in the festive spirit and hung colored lights on our tent. We got so much work done last night that Nick actually ran out of jobs for us. This is a great thing though, because it lets us know that we are ready to move forward with the project. More updates will come as the team goes into full production mode in these next few weeks as we try and meet our goal of having the lower half of the car body made before 2009 comes to a close.

Bronco Pride,
Joshua

Crazy Week

This week we mixed things up a bit. Due to the Thanksgiving Break that began today and the Tuesday Night game against Ball State, we decided to hold our build session on Monday night. This caused quite a few schedule issues and only a handful of members were able to come out and help. We focused on finishing up the cells and even though we were short handed, the job got done. We also spent some time thinking about how we are going to set up the lab in the coming weeks in order to make the job of fabricating the body easier on all of us. Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Bronco Pride,
Joshua

Getting Ready

A small side note that we forgot to mention in the last post. On Friday, Nov. 13th, the solar car team open the doors to the lab for tours by prospective Broncos. Nick led the discussions that briefly informed visitors about our purpose as an organization and helped to explain the 2005 car's capabilities. We would like to thank all visitors for coming and visiting us and we hope to see you next year!

This week we continued to prepare the lab for the mold-making process. Nick and Tim led a few members in the task of hanging plastic sheets from the tent that we set up a few weeks ago. Alex was working on an electrical component of the 2008 car that will be used again this year. This component will soon be placed into an electrical systems mock up of the 2010 car for testing prior to its actual installation on the currently non-existent vehicle. Abe, myself, and a few other members continued the delicate process of reclaiming solar modules for use on this year's car. We are about 1/3 of the way through cleaning, trimming, and sorting the panels and hope to finish soon so the panels can be tested and prepared for mounting on the new car.

Bronco Pride,
Joshua

Kalamazoo Holiday Parade

The Sunseeker Solar Race Car Team participated in the 2009 Kalamazoo Holiday Parade on November 14th. The team has been apart of the parade for many years now and is one of their favorite events to go to. This year they took the 2005 car and put on holiday lights and garland to be in the holiday spirit. The team had 13 members come out to talk about the car, drive in the parade and pass out candy. This is one of the many events that Sunseeker will do with the community. One of our goals as a project to go out and teach people about what technologies that we use in the car. We try inspire middle and high school students to pursue a career in mathematics based fields.

Bronco Pride,
Nicholas

The First of Many to Come

This is the first post of the 2010 Sunseeker Solar Race Car Team. We plan on posting a new entry every "Western" Wednesday after our main team meetings. This will not be limited to that though. Build sessions, events and other major milestones will be posted also. Not only is this blog to let you read and see the progress of the but to you about the process too.

Lets start with lasts weeks meeting, 11/03. There was a major milestone in the progress of the car. We sent out the body design to Van's Pattern and in few weeks will start to see the car come to life. In preparation for the mold coming to us we rearranged the lab. We have brought in the tent in order to keep the lab from getting to terribly dirty. The lab looks great and thanks to everyone who helped. I have received nothing but good responses from the people that I have talked to.

On to tonight, Tim gave a short speech on how we will continue the mold making process. You can see Tim talking with part of the 2008 array in his hand below. Josh continued to disassemble the 2008 array (I will have post referring to that in the future). The team also decorated the 2005 Sunseeker with Christmas lights and garland for the parade. The annual Kalamazoo Holiday Parade is this Saturday and Sunseeker will be a part of it.

As you can tell I am very excited, not only for the car but for this years team. I hope that you can share in that excitement with us.

Bronco Pride,
Nicholas