CapaciCar - Tomorrow's Technology Today

BLOG 7 - Let The Build Commence

... Almost

14-01-16

The team resumed project work after the exam period and the obvious thing to do was start nice and early with a business breakfast (out of our own pocket, not the project budget). IN order to ensure that we met the deadline we knew we needed to plan the assembly process in a logical order. This meant updating the project gantt chart which had been, for the second semester, fairly high level until this time. We had to determine the task dependencies and critical path to minimise the time wasted, minimise the risk to the project and give us the most time towards the end of the project to make up for delays and devote sufficient effort to writing the report.

The chassis frame assembly, power system connection and motor,axle and wheel assembly are to be carried out concurrently before being integrated together. CAD will be used for the process of joining the 3 main units of the car to ensure they fit. It’s crucial that although these tasks are to be carried out by different people to maximise efficiency, that communication is frequent and clear to maintain awareness of how they interact with each other, particularly the chassis frame and wheel assembly. The power system will be fixed by velcro onto a flat plate that will be fitted to the chassis frame. Where possible temporary fixings like this should be used until the full assembly is complete and the team are happy to finalise the vehicle.

Taking time to plan the assembly schedule before rushing head on into it should give us the best chance of a reliable and quality design that fits the purposes of the project and demonstrates the use of supercapacitors as the power source through a variety of test conditions.