Formula SAE

UNLV Formula Racing | University of Nevada - Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada

FABRICATION: CNC MDF CHASSIS JIG

A chassis welding jig was created by CNC routing various MDF pieces. The jig pieces were modeled in SolidWorks and imported into Rhino3D to be nested for CNC Routing. This MDF jig provided a guide for our chassis team to weld the 4130 Chromoly Tubing pieces to form our chassis. Toolpathing for the individual components were CNC programmed utilizing RhinoCAM.

SUSPENSION GEOMETRY DESIGN

SPECS:
Wheelbase: 62”
Track Width: 50"
Ride Height: 5”
Camber: -1 degrees
Kingpin Inclination: 7 degrees
Castor: 4 degrees

Note: Due to lack of tire data, these values were averaged to ideal values as a starting point using data gathered from team reports and forum board posts from other university teams.

SUSPENSION FRONT UPRIGHT DESIGN

In the 2021-2022 season, my primary project was to redesign the uprights to fit off-the-shelf RCV Front Wheel Hubs. With recently acquired funding from fundraising through Tesla and SAE’s “A World In Motion” Program, I was able to streamline the upright redesign to be lighter, more compact and refined compared to the previous year’s design. The previous year’s upright design had a mass of 1.6 kg (~ 3.5 lbs). The new design had a mass of 1.1 kg (~ 2.5 lbs) which had a mass reduction of 0.5 kg (~ 1.1 lbs). With the new RCV Front Wheel Hubs, I was able to reduce the cost of the Aluminum 6061-T6 stock material due to the more compact design.