Unwind's First Roar!!

Today we succesfully tested out our LGA 340 Lombardini engine after getting the electrical and fuel supply connections right.A video coming up soon.Credits to ENT ,Dewaj and Nikhilesh.

E&T Team Going For Gold

1st October 2009:

Preparations are goin on at full swing as Team Unwired are finalising on its design as the fabrication is about to begin.

The Chromoly (ordered from the US) used for fabricating the rollcage has arrived and is presently stuck at Ernakulam at customs (Bloody customs officer). We are hopeful of getting the Chromoly till the 7th of October. So presently the jobless Chassis team is out looking for MS pipes for making the MS rollcage and the jigs used for keeping the pipes straight while welding.

And after much delay from the Engineering Unit of our college, the electrification of our workspace will finally begin (thanks to the Director). So hopefully you guys will see our workspace lighted up and running at full throttle from next week.

So back to the main story:

What distinguishes our team from the rest???

1. We are using Chromoly for our rollcage ( 30% lighter than other material)

2. We may be the first team from the country to use a CVT (no need for changing gears + max efficiency)

3. We are designing and fabricating our own FNR gearbox..the first team in the country to do so

As you may see "designing" a gearbox is not an easy task and the entire load has fallen on our E&T (Engine and Transmission) team to make this impossible task possible in just a month.

So after days of nite-outs, discussions(read fights), deliberations and study, they have finally arrived at a design and this is what it looks like:

So more than half of the work done, the team has to just design the casing and give it for casting outside. But the casing is proving to be a major headache because of the estimated cost of the casting increasing as the design begins to become more complex. So the casing has to be as rectangular as possible and still has to be as rounded as possible for the splash lubrication to take place.

So the team is still deliberating this by consulting with people from the industry. You can see these guys working on weekends in the classroom of DB 319 with the projector and making the casing in CAD and placing the gearbox to optimize their design. Here you can see their latest casing design and placement in the vehicle:

The diffrential has been provided to us by Eaton Ltd. Thank you Eaton for providing us all the technical details of the LSD (Limited Slip Diffrential). The unique point of the LSD is that it is specifically meant for off-road racing. The LSD is differnt from the open differntial from the fact that in an open diffrential, a condition of slip occurs when one of the driving wheels has no traction and the vehicle does not move. This condition can be seen when a vehicle is stuck in mud. The LSD prevents this by mean of a locking mechanism which gets activated in this condition and makes it work like a solid axle.

Right Now!

Fabrication of Unwind has begun!!
The roll cage is now complete!! Welding was completed around a week ago.
Also we received the powerhouse of our ATV,a brand new, 11 HP LGA 340 Lombardini Engine, this week.It now rests in our workspace,waiting to be mounted,and will roar soon! (Soon = After cumbersome end sem exams,30 November)
The team is,of course, staying back during the holidays and we expect to get a good portion of the fabrication complete by then.

Lets ROLL!!

April 2009 - Progress

This was the month when things really started to kick off. Our primary target as of now is the preliminary design report which has to be submitted online by the 15th of June. The preliminary design report needs to contain information about the roll cage of the ATV, including the CAD model and FEA analysis.

One of the first steps taken was to draw rough sketches of our roll cage. We gained ideas from the designs of previous BAJA teams, both US and India, thanks to Google Images :). We created a database of these images and the rollcage team had a brainstorming session discussing the pros and cons of each design. This helped us a great deal in making our own unique design and…..VOILA….we had our own rough design.

Another primary requirement was that the roll cage stick to the dimensional restrictions provided in the rule book. For this purpose, we had one of our potential drivers sit in a comfortable driving position while the others took the necessary measurements. With these as well as other sub-systems in mind, we modified our rough design and created a more or less dimensionally sound drawing on paper.\m/ Now this needed to be recreated in CAD.

The CAD softwares which are available to us are PRO/ENGINEER,CATIA and SolidWorks. CATIA is the primary CAD software chosen as we have atleast one member(Shenoy) who was well versed with it. We are trying to make use of PRO/E and SolidWorks as well, but for the moment we are still in the learning stages. For this purpose we have installed CATIA and SolidWorks in the computer centre. However Shenoy will be unavailable due to internships and so he taught the basics of roll cage design to a few other members of the roll cage team.

Meanwhile the other teams were also busy working on their respective subsystems.
By the end of the month, exams were fast approaching ,so it’s been decided to halt all work by 26th April and to resume after the exams.

Get..Set...GO!!!

MARCH 2009 – The BAJA journey begins

Techfest and Kshitj (IIT Bombay's and IIT Kharagpur's technical fests respectively) are over and Team Unwired is thirsting for new challenges. BAJA SAE ASIA 2010 appeared to be a good platform to test our technical competence. The prospect of building our own ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) and to race it, seemed to arouse the engineers within.

It’s going to be a tough 10 months ahead and we need to get started from scratch. The big hurdle, as of now, is to get acquainted with the various aspects of car building. We have divided ourselves into teams-each responsible for studying a sub system of the car and to effectively teach what they learnt to the rest of the team. We have regular “UnConferences” on weekends in DB 319 (our beloved room in the Department Building (DB) fully equipped with projectors et al) discussing these aspects.

We have also decided to construct a go kart in order to get our hands dirty and to get ourselves familiar with vehicle fabrication techniques. For this purpose we paid a visit to” Kart Attack”, a popular go karting track in Coimbatore. We were allowed to study the parts in good detail by the kind manager, one Mr.Pugal.Later in the evening we also enjoyed ourselves to the sheer thrill of speeding in the go karts. A truly motivational trip, which has catapulted us into the BAJA mood!