2.

810 Manufacturing Processes and Systems

Project Report: Design and Fabrication of Radio Controlled Cars
Group D: Team Members

Shorya Awtar

Jeff Dahmus

Hyun Kim

Raul Martinez

Pat Willoughby

James Won


The Cah













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Our Fleet of Cahs


2
Group Strategy and Functioning of the Team

After a series of meetings early in the semester, the group determined the key
components and subassemblies involved in the design and fabrication of the car. These
items were:
Car Chassis
Rear Suspension
Front Suspension
Steering Mechanism and Interface
Interface Plate and Electronics
Car Shell and Mold

The group met once a week for the first 4-5 weeks after the team had formed, two to
three times every week during the following month, and almost every working day during
the last six weeks.

During the initial phase of the project, the focus of the meetings was on the design and
manufacturing issues related to each of the above subassemblies. These meetings
involved intense brainstorming sessions, which generated many ideas on any given
component/subassembly. In the following meetings, all team-members would present
prototypes of their respective ideas and the entire team would critically evaluate each
prototype. Based on this evaluation, the team selected the one or two most-promising
designs. The second design was retained as a backup in case the original was
unsuccessful on actual implementation.

After these initial sessions on each of the design areas, usually one or two persons in the
team would take the lead in that particular area and would spearhead the detailed design
of the component/subassembly in concern. At every stage in the process of detailed
design, the entire team would scrutinize the design so that the final
component/subassembly embodied ideas and suggestions from the entire team. This
strategy worked very well. Each person in the team led a certain design area and the
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others provided their inputs. Therefore, there was no single leader for the entire project;
each member assumed leadership in a specific area. By running the group this way, each
individual contributed significantly while maintaining a sense of responsibility for the
project as a whole.

While all the component/subassembly designs were underway, certain members of the
team started the process of integrating these into an overall prototype of the car. This step
provided further insights and led to modifications in the individual component/sub-
assembly designs, which made the design more suitable for assembly. Once the final
prototype was ready, it was thoroughly evaluated for the final design objective:
performance of the cars on the racetrack. Satisfied with the final prototype, the team
proceeded with the task of manufacturing and assembling multiple cars. This task was
shared evenly by the entire team.

4
Task Distribution in the team:

DESIGN ISSUE TASK MEMBERS
Design/Prototype Jeff
Car Chassis
Manufacturing Jeff, Pat, Shorya, Hyun
Design/Prototype Raul, Shorya
Rear Suspension
Manufacturing Pat, Shorya, James, Hyun
Design/Prototype Raul, Shorya
Front Suspension
Manufacturing Raul, James, Pat, Hyun, Shorya
Design/Prototype Raul, Jeff
Steering Mechanism and
Interface
Manufacturing Raul, Pat, Hyun
Design/Prototype All
Interface Plate and
Mechanism
Manufacturing Jeff, Raul, Pat
Design All
Electronics
Manufacturing Hyun, Jeff, James
Design/Prototype Jeff
Car shell and mold
Manufacturing Jeff, Raul, Hyun, James
Wheel hubs Manufacturing Shorya, Jeff, Pat, James
Cutting, Shaping, and
Gluing of tires
Manufacturing Shorya, James, Jeff




5
Estimate of the total group time spent on this project
Man Hours
Meetings (20%) 150
Design and Prototyping (18.7%)
Brainstorming 60
Machine shop time 80
CAD/CAM (9.3%) 70
Manufacturing (23.3%)
Conventional Machining 105
CNC Machining 20
Water-jet 40
Injection Molding 5
Thermoforming 5
Assembly (20%) 150
Miscellaneous (8.7%)
Assembly of car-kit 20
Procurement of material 15
Driving Practice 30

Total Time 750


Time Estimate for Pit-stops
2.25 seconds






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Key Design and Manufacturing Issues

Chassis Design
The critical issue regarding the chassis involved the choice between a sheet metal design
and a cast design. As the team wanted a strong and robust chassis, the team elected to go
with a cast design. Also, knowing that we would be working with sheet metal for other
parts of our car, we wanted to experience an additional process.
The casting design addressed the following concerns:
Honeycomb design with uniform thickness helped to avoid hot spots and
shrinkage cavities.
Sharp corners were avoided to prevent cracking and tearing during cooling.
Large, flat sections were avoided to prevent warping.
Casting pattern was machined slightly larger to take shrinkage into account.
Casting pattern was machined with the appropriate draft angle.
Rear fender and one locating post were included into the casting design.
Please see drawing on page 9.

References:
Casting Handout from September 27, 2000.
Kalpakjian, Serope. Manufacturing Engineering and Technology. 3
rd
edition. pg 334-340

Lessons learned:
Due to the difficulty in predicting shrinkage, tolerances on the actual part differed from
prototypes made with the water-jet. Also, material properties of cast aluminum were
different from sheet aluminum used in prototypes. These slight variations resulted in
some redesign after receiving our cast chassis.

Car Suspension
The key question that arose in this case was whether to have a car suspension or not.
Since the car had to negotiate bumps and uneven surfaces, it was decided at a very early
stage that the car should be fully suspended, i.e. a front as well as rear suspension was
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required. The suspension system would certainly make the design relatively more
complicated and require more parts, but the car performance could not be compromised.

Rear suspension
Once it was decided that a rear suspension was necessary, the key decision was whether
to implement a conventional spring-damper design or to explore a leaf-spring based
suspension design. While the conventional spring-damper design would require
considerable machining and assembly of many parts, an appropriate use of leaf springs
could meet all the suspension requirements despite a simple design. The design concerns
were:
To minimize number of parts and keep the design very simple
To ensure a static ground clearance of 1.
To make the suspension system tunable i.e. be able to change the suspension
stiffness at later stage if necessary.
The final rear suspension design uses two leaf-springs that can be easily assembled to the
motor mount and provide vertical as well as roll compliance. The stiffness of the
suspension can be varied by using stacks of leaf-springs.
Please see drawings on pages 10-12.

Front suspension and steering mechanism
The rear suspension design could not be replicated for the front because of space
constraints. Other leaf spring designs failed to meet the necessary requirements that arose
due to the turning of the front wheels. A much simpler coil spring design was finally
implemented. The major challenges foreseen while designing the front suspension and
steering mechanism were:
To keep both the suspension system and steering linkage high enough to clear the
1 bumps.
To have a simple design without expensive shock-absorbers or difficult to
manufacture four-bar linkages.

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Our final design coupled the steering linkage to the bracket that held the front wheels.
This was done to impart stability to the steering assembly. The bracket that held the front
wheels was mounted above the chassis and was designed to slide vertically on a block
and two posts, all connected to the chassis. This also protected the steering and
suspension system from potential damage when the car bottomed out on bumps. The
steering interface was a simple Y-shaped design that would self-align the wheels when
the electronics plate was being mounted.
Please see drawings on pages 13-18.

Interface Plate Design and Electronics
There were several design goals necessary for a successful electronics plate: an accurate
method of aligning and attaching the plate to the chassis, a comfortable handle, and the
packaging and attachment of the electronics. The attachment mechanism consists of a
key-chain style quick release button, which snaps into a turned receptacle on the chassis.
By pushing the button, two small balls slide into the button body, allowing easy
placement and removal of the plate. The alignment of the plate is achieved by aligning
two tapered holes on two tapered pins and lowering the unit until the button locks. For
comfort and ease of use, a turned aluminum handle covered with soft foam was used as
the handle. The handle was positioned to reduce the distance to the button and the force
necessary to depress the button. To package the electronics on the plate, small sheet metal
clasps were bent around the pieces and bolted to the plate. The power transmission
occurred across two copper pieces fixed to a Delrin block on the plate. These copper
pieces mesh with switch block contacts, which were purchased in pairs, cut to size, and
fixed to an additional Delrin plate on the chassis.
Please see drawings on pages 19-24.

Car Shell
Not wanting to constrain our chassis design by the existing shell options, we chose to
machine our own car mold for thermoforming. Our main requirements were those of
functionality, although every attempt was made to make an aesthetically pleasing shell.
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The shell fits snugly over our chassis, and provides a cavity to help guide the interchange
unit into place. The mold design addressed the following concerns:
Mold pattern was machined slightly larger to take shrinkage into account.
Draft angles were incorporated into the design to allow for easy removal of the
thermoformed piece from the mold.
Stiffening details on the side walls were added to make the final thermoform more
rigid.
Sharp corner radii and undercuts were avoided.
Please see drawing on page 25.

References:
Thermoform handout from October16, 2000.

Lessons learned:
As with the casting, shrinkage of the thermoform is difficult to predict. However, we
were able to fit our shell quite nicely to our chassis. A great deal of fine adjustment was
required to perfect the thermoforming process. Heating temperature, heating time, hold
time, cooling time, and other parameters of the heating and molding process all had to be
adjusted to get the desired thermoform result. Post processing of the thermoform,
primarily trimming, also required a fair amount of time and effort.