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Where is the chassis?! Thanks to a heroic effort from our welders this past week, CMR 14e’s chassis has been sent to powder coating over a month earlier than in previous years. Our Garage looks empty now that tab production has ended. Notice to multitude of new tabs and chassis structure required by our 100% electric powertrain. Look forward to the shiny new chassis arriving next week!

Not to stay idle, CMR took this opportunity of a clean Garage to show some local high school students who are interested in STEM careers around the Garage. It was great seeing young students excited about race car engineering!

CMR has entered the final tabbing phase before the chassis is sent out for powdercoating this week. Brand new high-voltage wire routing tabs can be seen, along with the huge high-voltage disconnect switch required by the rules.

A sweet driver training corner has been set up for taking breaks in the Garage too, keeping us sharp during these cold winter months.

Although this digital training might be enough for most teams, CMR stepped up this year by attending PittRace’s first Snowball Enduro. With sub-20 degree temperatures and an ice-covered karting track, CMR raced many other teams in a slipping and sliding filled competition. We scored a Second Place trophy, which is not bad considering 2 of our 3 teams broke their karts mid-race.

Our welders have been working overtime in the past week to finish welding the chassis and position all CMR 14e’s tabs onto the vehicle. You can see the new accumulator protection chassis tubing on either side of the main structure.

Both G10-FR4 accumulator containers have now been epoxied together and will undergo final touches this week before battery pack assembly begins. Module compression endplates have also been waterjetted and post machined.

To add to this eventful week, our Garage has undergone many improvements. New light fixtures, part washer, CNC coolant filter, large computer monitors and air heater have made working in the shop much more productive. We are excited to spend all our free time down there this semester!

Many of CMR’s team members participated this week in Carnegie Mellon’s Build 18 event – with students working all week on an ECE/CS related project. Not to miss a great opportunity to work on race cars, CMR was well represented.

One project wired rotary potentiometers, pressure sensors, tapped the throttle position sensor on CMR 67, and connected them to a computer to play Need For Speed using the car’s controls. Crowds were gathering around to see.

A custom lap timer was also made for keeping track of our testing times, in addition to a reprogrammed RC car using a custom software package that will translate onto next year’s GLV controls system to increase sampling speed.

It was also an exciting process getting the car into the Gym, the looks we received from CMU employees was priceless.

Back from Winter Break, CMR has plunged right back into manufacturing – especially of our new electric components. Hours of copper machining has taken place to make 300 1/8″ OD tubing inserts for our accumulator PCB board, along with 90 bus bars to connect our batteries.

Custom cut G10-FR4 fiberglass has also arrived, and our accumulator container will be taking shape very shortly!

CMR is proud to present its 2014 Teaser Trailer, produced by Dan Christiansen. Check it out!

Although the semester has now ended and most students have spread across the world, CMR continues to forge on. Everyone has been given their Winter Break assignments and will be keeping busy pushing the team forward, especially without classes to prevent us! This includes continuing ANSYS and ADAMS simulations, manufacturing, and organizing logistics for the upcoming semester.

Several students will even be returning to Pittsburgh early to work on CMR 14e uninterrupted and machine many components.

CMR wishes everyone a Happy Holiday season!

To celebrate a long semester of work and Formula, the entire team was rewarded this week with custom printed team stickers to show CMR pride around campus. We will all take these and our winter assignments home to continue developing CMR 14e.

CMR also removed our old friction saw to make more room for our new race car, and to improve the shop overall. Although it was an adventure, our extremely in-shape team was able to maneuver the 800 lb device out of the shop.

Last week we our team was happy to distribute the Official CMR 14e shirt to all members and University friends. We will be proudly wearing our gear throughout the year while we build our electric race car, and at both Lincoln and New Hampshire competitions.

In the meantime many waterjetted parts have been rolling in thanks to Atomatic Manufacturing Co., and we have enjoyed some beautiful Pittsburgh testing days with CMR 57 and 67.

We will be making a rolling chassis push from now until the semester ends, so look out for much more progress to come.

Carnegie Mellon Racing was happy to welcome President Suresh at his Inauguration Celebration this past week by proudly displaying CMR 67 on campus. We look forward to working more with Dr. Suresh in our electric race car development this year and in the future.