Fast and Furious – Formula Student
Student experience 6th March 2018
The first time I encountered Formula Student was during Welcome Week. They had what looked like a go kart race car placed right in the middle of the Sackville Street Building entrance hall. The car was eye catching so I walked over to talk to the guy next to it.
The car belongs to the Formula Student team. Formula Student is a society that builds a race car to enter competitions every year. Our car has a Yamaha motorbike engine and it is pretty fast – it’s 0-100km/h time is just above 2 seconds.
Sadly we haven’t won any competitions yet but we are working on developing our vehicle. There is also an electric car division in the race, which we have dipped into in the past, but our team has a strong heritage in petrol vehicles so this is where our current strengths are.
The members of the team are mostly from MACE, but EEE students are also needed. I was eager to join so I emailed my application and luckily I became a part of the team.
There are 7 of us in the electrical team. We meet every Wednesday afternoon and occasional evenings when extra work is needed. The first few meeting of the team were mostly introductions.
Everyone in the team has a unique task which is allocated according to their own strengths. Some are in charge of the ECU, some are in charge of programming. Since my teammate Sam and I were the only Freshers in the team and we didn’t know much about programming yet, we were given the task to loom the car’s harness. We had a harness from last year’s model to start from. It was roughly made and wrapped by electric tape! It did not meet the industry standard so we decided to put in some real effort and make the new harness aerospace-grade.
We first started with ordering the connectors. After making two different models we ordered deutsch connectors from TE connectivity. Then we also ordered the cable, boots, and heat shrinks. Now we are waiting on our orders, as soon as our connectors arrive, we will put them together and the car will function.
I’m really excited to see how the final product will perform in the competition, which is in July. I’ll keep you updated on developments and let you know when the location has been announced – I’m keeping my fingers crossed for somewhere hot!
Harry
Main image Formula Student UK
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