Author: Matt Lambert

  • Roll Bar Rolls In

    When we decided to make a titanium roll cage, we knew that it would be hard to source, bend, machine, and weld the tubes. Thanks to the guys at SR Sales, we got some excellent titanium tubes.   The guys at SF Tube did an excellent job at bending our tubes to exact specifications. Titanium has…

  • CNC Machining!

    One of the great things about the solar car project is making our own mechanical parts and optimizing the weight, strength, and performance for the application. Often, we think of designs that would be nearly impossible for a human-operated machine, so we turn to computer-controlled tool. For two-dimensional parts, we can use photoetching, lasercutting, or…

  • Video of Our Last Layup

    We are working very hard to finish our car so that we can “test the *$(# out of it”, as our strategy calls for. Last weekend, we finished our final layup, in the process using almost all of the carbon that we had left. The layup turned out great thanks to our great molds and…

  • Bottom Shell Layup Video

    Check out our YouTube channel for more videos from this build cycle: http://www.youtube.com/susolarcar

  • The Layup Process

    Here at the Stanford Solar Car Project, we believe in sharing things that we learn. One of the coolest things that we learn is composite construction, which is the key to making a light and stiff structure. We’ve broken down our layup process for the top shell in this video, which is on our YouTube…

  • Not that kind of Layup

    Now that we have all of the materials to make the body of our car, things are progressing quickly. Over thanksgiving, several team members stayed around and made some great progress on the the frame and topshell of the car. Like Apogee, our new car will have carbon fiber top and bottom shells, which we…

  • American Solar Challenge 2010 Video Documentary

    Sorry we took so long on this!  This is a compilation of HD video that we took during the race! American Solar Challenge 2010 Documentary

  • Sprint to the Finish

    We started today fifth in line at Rolla, Missouri.  The officials were very nice and allowed both Calgary and Bochum to take their places at the start even though they arrived late (we only wish they had afforded the same courtesy to us at the Topeka stage start).  A few Missouri S&T solar car fans (tons of…

  • Moving On Up

    Sorry about the lack of posts yesterday, we are taking this race a bit more seriously now and had a lot of work to do to get our car ready for the drive today. Yesterday, we started in Topeka.  Because the hotel was so comfortable and the continental breakfast was so tasty, we had some…

  • Topeka!

    At about 1:45 pm today, we rolled into the Topeka stage stop.  This was our first stage stop, where we essentially wait for all of the teams to get to one place and then leave one minute apart the following morning. We had a tailwind most of the day today, which resulted in lower power…

  • Ready to Rayce

    Today we had the last lazy morning we will have for a good while.  After we finally woke up, we got started working on the car.  We were excited to show off the car to Ryan, who designed the body and suspension but has never seen the car fully assembled.  He drove it around a…

  • Go Speed Racer, Go!

    Half of our team stayed up into the wee hours of the night helping Oregon State prepare their car for a final attempt to qualify for the American Solar Challenge.  Their old NGM motor controller was dead, their NGM motor had a failed hall sensor, their creative brake cylinders were leaking, and they had a…

  • Qualified and Working Smoothly

    Today was a great day for the team.  We woke up early, excited to have a car that was making solar power and had a functional bps.  There was a bit of a roadblock when we went to get our bps re-scrutineered and realized that we hadn’t fixed the timeout problem.  The scrutineer was very…

  • Now For the Fun Part

    Today marks the end of the scrutineering phase of the solar challenge.  The car has been properly saftied, and flexlocks have been placed everywhere we could think of, including strategic locations in our electrical systems.  We are ready to go on all of our systems, with the exception of a small battery issue and a…

  • Great Success, The Team is Off to Texas

    As we suspected, it took us all night last night to complete rewiring our array.  Our new wiring scheme allows us to use the latest version of Sasha’s MPPT’s, which are not only a huge improvement on the ones we had in Australia, but are also about half the weight.  We ended up stringing the…