Lending A Helping Hand

One manufacturing company, Midwest Composite Technologies, provided the necessary quality components and some much-needed experience to a Milwaukee School of Engineering educational program. According to Sven Krause, a junior at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), “We saw the SAE challenge as an opportunity to show how well the students at our university could perform.

One manufacturing company, Midwest Composite Technologies, provided the necessary quality components and some much-needed experience to a Milwaukee School of Engineering educational program.

According to Sven Krause, a junior at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), “We saw the SAE challenge as an opportunity to show how well the students at our university could perform.”

As the program founder, Sven became the team leader for the 13 students who set to work in 2009 to meet the June 10/11 2010 deadline for the competition.

 “Staying on track was a huge part of the overall job,” he said.

It wasn’t until late December 2009 that Sven and his team ran into Helmut Keidl, President of Midwest Composite Technologies. When they explained their needs to Helmut, he agreed to help them out with plugs for their microcar’s body.

At the time, the MSOE team wasn’t sure how they were going to approach having the body of their microcar produced. However, Helmut suggested he create the body plugs for the molding process.”

The MSOE team designed the body plugs using SolidWorks CAD software. Alex Zelhofer spent about 300 man-hours designing the body, after which he performed fluid dynamic tests using STAR-CCM+ software. Using the CAD files, Alex uploaded the CAD design files to Midwest Composite for initial review and then fabrication.

Helmut suggested a few changes to the drawings based on his knowledge and experience building this kind of product. Once they agreed on the changes, Helmut used a huge five axis CNC machine to create the one-to-one scale version we needed. The Midwest CNC Router offers an envelope size of 23-ft x 10-ft x 5-ft.  

There are two halves to the body of the microcar. The bottom half is fairly straightforward in design. That’s where the driver sits along with some electrical and electronic equipment. The bottom is only about eight inches high.

The top half is the more difficult to make because it incorporates some smooth flowing curves, grooves, and other aerodynamic features. The entire two-pieces, when fit together, measure about 10.5-feet long, 3-feet high, and 2-3 feet wide.

The material used in the CNC machine was a medium density fiberboard (MDF) glued layer-upon-layer to the required height per plug. MDF was a better material to use than something like a synthetic wood, which has a higher cost.

The MDF material not only helped to keep the project’s budget in check, it allowed the plugs to be much more accurate, even though it would need post surface finishing to bring it to perfect smoothness.

“Midwest could have performed all the post finishing, but it was important for our team to see what really went into a job like this,” said Sven.

From the time the MSOE team uploaded the drawings to Midwest Composite to the time both parts were delivered was approximately eight days.

“We depended on a fast turnaround on this part of the project because we knew what lay ahead of us,” said Sven.

Midwest was able to offer the team a huge time savings in fabricating the body plugs.

“Had we gone with the traditional method of cutting out foam, filling it, and prepping it for use, it would have cost us upwards of 6,000 man-hours of time. The old, traditional process is very labor intensive,” he said.

The bottom portion of the plug arrived in about three days, the top half about four days later.

“The top half was to be our aerodynamic shell. It required an overall sleekness and aesthetic appearance, which was important to us. The project had to operate well, but it also had to look good,” said Sven.

The bottom portion of the plug weighed around 450-500 pounds, while the top portion weighed in at nearly a thousand pounds.

“Since we were planning on using raw unpainted carbon fiber for the body, the surface finish of the plugs (then molds) was of highest importance. After spending about 120 hours worth of sanding, filling, painting, and priming, we were able to achieve smoothness most comparable to countertop granite, which was excellent for the fiberglass molds,” Sven continued. “Midwest Composite’s components really allowed us to bump up the quality of our overall production! Plus, Midwest is an industrial company, which means that they created industrial standard plugs for us. We’ll be able to use these parts multiple times without degradation. The help we received from Midwest was vital to the success of the project and the quality of their work was truly immaculate.”

As mentioned, the carbon fiber body had to be both aesthetically pleasing as well as strong. Since weight was an important factor, the team was happy to know that they were able to fabricate the body to weigh around ten pounds.

“At this juncture in the process,” Sven said, “we’re getting somewhere around 400 miles per gallon with our microcar.”

 Besides the competition, the MSOE team has been actively searching for venues around the greater Milwaukee area where they could display and showcase their design, as well as the sponsors who helped them create the vehicle. They teamed up with Discovery World Museum on Pier Wisconsin in downtown Milwaukee, which is a hands-on interactive museum located on the shores of Lake Michigan.

The museum features a large variety of mechanical/science-based exhibits, and scheduled the car for exhibition from July 8-11of this year. The idea of the partnership was to capture the minds of the younger crowd and show them the ways in which they are able to turn their simple passion of creativity into a career in engineering.

MSOE faired quite well for a first time entrant in the challenge. In fact, they received a perfect score (100/100) from the verbal report necessary for the competition. The team also passed their tech inspection on the first try, which is something that only eight out of the 33 registered teams did.

MSOE was the second car to pass the tech inspection and the only car to pass on the first day without having to make any changes to the vehicle.

The car’s mileage gradually increased over a total of eight runs from around 450 miles per gallon to 750. Once again MSOE was the only team to complete the allotted 8/8 runs over the course of the day, which says a lot for the durability of the vehicle. The closest runner up was Akron with 5 runs.

The vehicle was also the lightest car at the competition. When the competition wound up, MSOE came in 11th, a very respectable finish for a first year team.

For more information, visit www.midwestcomposite.com

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