Our team is pushing to have our car put together in time for our wind tunnel this session in June, so we haven’t had time to write up a detailed update on our progress. Almost every subsystem on the car has a finalized design at this point, and we have manufacturing queues set up here at VAIL and at our sponsors such as Gonsel’s Machine Shop throughout the Bay Area.

We’ll have hundreds of components coalescing at the shop at the end of the month, then we’ll quickly assemble everything and get Luminos to North Carolina.

Here is a video from the winter when we glued the top shell of our car on.

Here are some assorted pictures from the last few months.

Accelerator pedal carrier machined by Michael from Chris’s design

Soldering solar cells.

An early motor winding trial.

Installing the 4-bar linkage a while back

Our new acrylic lenses are as clear as glass thanks to Darren.

A sample of our machined components to date. These ones haven’t been de-burred or polished yet. They look even better after finishing.

Gel coating our plugs to make thermoforming molds.

“Cardinal red” after not buying enough dye.

 

Vacuum bagging composites once again.

Here is our electrical system on a bench. The e-team has handed over the boards for code at this point.

Test battery pack! We have almost everything to manufacture the real one soon.

This year we are integrating radio push-to-talk into the drivers steering wheel. We are also experimenting with different helmet mic and earphone setups. Here is one iteration.

We’re making progress on vinyl wrapping Luminos

Solar Car has a new permanent next door neighbor at VAIL. Swing by in the upcoming months to see the electrified future of this American classic.

Gonsel’s Machine Shop is a family-owned-and-operated job shop which serves the Bay Area from their 6,000 square foot machining and fabrication factory in Oakland. All of our solar cars in recent memory have included precision machined components from Gonsel’s Machine Shop. Gonsel’s provides quick turn around times while still manufacturing some of the most complex components of our car. This year Gonsel’s Machine Shop is manufacturing the uprights, spindles, and hubs for Luminos. We’ll have these components on the car soon, and Luminos will be rolling before long.

Weatherzone is a product of The Weather Company, established in September 1998 initially in response to a demand from television broadcasters for more sophisticated weather programming. The Weather Company provides weather data to media and Internet organisations serving customers in industry, agriculture, government, recreation, education and consumer markets. Weatherzone will be providing customized weather data for our team as we race across Australia this fall. This data will serve as part of the foundation of our strategy during the World Solar Challenge.

AMPL is a comprehensive and powerful algebraic modeling language for linear and nonlinear optimization problems, in discrete or continuous variables. Our team will be using AMPL software to build one of our strategy models. This model will combine data such as the weather, our car’s efficiency, the road grade, and more to determine optimal cruising speeds throughout the race.

Italix is a precision chemical etching shop in Santa Clara. Italix has expanded their support for Luminos by providing the chemically etched plates for our battery pack. We will be welding these plates to our battery cells soon before assembling our battery pack. Italix is one of our longtime sponsors – they’ve been crucial in every solar array and battery pack our team has built in recent memory – and we thank them for their continued support on our new car.

Textiles technology group Royal TenCate (TenCate) is a multinational company which develops and produces solutions which are sold worldwide for the protection of people and their working and living environment. This year our team used TenCate’s film adhesive solutions to construct our carbon fiber composites. TenCate film adhesive allows our team to glue our carbon skin to our Nomex honeycomb core significantly increasing the strength of our composite layups. TenCate offered a broad array of composite materials. The film we used offered an ideal combination of strength properties, weight saving thinness, and cure temperatures that matched our other composite materials.

Friends Level Sponsors

 

Henry and Margy Dudley have generously contributed to help us build both Xenith and Luminos.

 

The Young Engineers extensive product line consists of various industry-standard and proprietary molded-in, mechanically attached, floating-nut and floor panel fastener types, along with rivet inserts, tensile fasteners and installation tooling. The Young Engineers helped our team build Xenith. Now they are providing our team with composite inserts for Luminos’s battery pack.

President Titanium is a small, veteran and family-owned business with the largest inventory of domestic 6Al/4V Grade 5, 6Al/4V ELI (Grade 23), and CP-Grade 4 titanium bar, billet, sheet, and plate in the United States. President Titanium has generously sponsored our team’s titanium for Luminos. We will be using titanium to build strong yet lightweight spindles to mount our hubs and wheels.

SKF manufactures virtually every type of ball and roller bearing. SKF also sells a wide assortment of plain bearings, rod ends, bushings, bearing units, and housings. Our team is using SKF bearings throughout our car’s moving parts. SKF bearings play a critical role in the reliability and efficiency of our motor and suspension.

 

Vicor designs, manufactures and markets modular power components and complete power systems used in the communications, data processing, industrial controls, test equipment, medical and defense electronic markets. Our team is using Vicor DC-DC converters in our new battery management system.

SolEpoxy is a global manufacturer, high-tech specialist innovator of epoxy dielectric coating powders and molding compounds, plus a unique, optically clear epoxy molding compound. Our team is using SolEpoxy powder epoxy coatings to insulate our motor windings from our stator laminations. The product is applied using a fluidizing bed to coat our laminations before winding.

 

Cutting Edge Machining, Advanced Components Manufacturing, and Rollin J Lobaugh Inc have collaborated this cycle to help our team manufacture the linkages for our suspension A-arms. Cutting Edge Machining, Inc provides contract manufacturing solutions for Medical, Aerospace, Scientific, and Electronics OEMS. Advanced Components Manufacturing Inc is a machine shop in Burlingame that serves the entire Silicon Valley. Rollin J Lobaugh is a longtime sponsor of our team with swiss screw machines and an array of CNC machining centers.

Cree is leading the LED lighting revolution and making energy-wasting traditional lighting technologies obsolete through the use of energy-efficient, environmentally friendly LED lighting. Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting, and semiconductor solutions for wireless and power applications. Cree provides all of the LED’s that serve as the headlights, taillights, and turn signals for Luminos.

Other Sponsors

Marketing Masters

Jamba Juice

Big Blue Saw

Github

Palo Alt0 Hardware

Advanced Laserjet and Waterjet Cutting

Just Endmills and Supply Co.

Welcome admitted students!

If you’re looking for something to do this Saturday afternoon, and you’re interested in one of the coolest engineering student groups at Stanford, you can:

1. Show up and say hi at our shop here at noon.

2. Come check us out at the ASURPS research fair near tressider from 1-3pm

3. Come by the shop from 4pm  onwards.

We’re looking forward to meeting you all!

 

Seven months from today, the Stanford Solar Car Project will drive into the Australian Outback at the start of the 2013 World Solar Challenge. The team has made significant progress in the last ten months  in designing and manufacturing our entry for the 2013 WSC. Today we are excited to announce the name for our newest solar car.

The Stanford Solar Car Project’s 2013 vehicle is named Luminos.

Luminos is originally from Latin and means bright, glowing or radiant. The name marks a shift from our team’s recent history of naming our cars after astronomy terminology. Our team decided to find a new family of solar car names to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our team’s founding. The Stanford Solar Car Project has allowed many generations of students to have an incredible hands on learning opportunity while advancing some of the most exciting prototype technologies of today.

Luminos is also a break from recent tradition in that the vehicle has both a four wheeled platform and a large upright seating area. The new vehicle design should make our solar car safer and more practical to drive while still maintaining the ultra efficient design and speed focus of our previous generations. Our team has exciting new technologies surrounding our array encapsulation, motor design, suspension design, electronics, and more.

Countless student volunteer hours have gone into developing the technologies behind Luminos, and our team is currently driving to have Luminos ready for wind tunnel testing the third week of June. Our team will conduct extensive road tests after our wind tunnel session. After a summer of refining our new car we will send Luminos to Australia for the World Solar Challenge. Visit our blog, Facebook, and Twitter to follow our team’s  progress!

Over the last week our team glued  dozens of Click Bond inserts into our carbon chassis. These inserts allow us to mount everything from  suspension hardpoints to electronics to our car chassis. Our team has been surprised and delighted by Click Bond’s composite insert solutions.  We are using a series of through panel inserts with integrated heli-coils for all of our suspension mounts. These inserts come with a clever silicone plug that serves two purposes.  The plug keeps epoxy out of the insert during installation, and the plug also serves to hold the inserts together while the glue dries. This integrated solution has saved our team a lot of time this week. Click Bond’s cable management inserts feature a handy VHB mounted alignment jig with each insert that make it easy to perfectly align every insert on our car.

 

Henkel has been an important donor for the Stanford solar car project for many years. Today our team received a palette full of film adhesive and structural epoxies from Henkel.  Henkel operates in three business areas: Home Care (with household cleaning products such as laundry detergent and dishwashing liquid), Personal Care (with beauty and oral care products such as shampoo, toothpaste, hair colorants and shower products like Dial Soap and Right Guard), and Adhesives, Sealants & Surface Treatment for consumer and industrial purposes. Our team also uses Henkel Loctite and Henkel Freekote products to build our solar cars.

 

The Stanford Solar Decathlon team recently started construction on their new Start.Home. Stanford Solar Decathlon participates in a US Department of Energy Competition where teams are asked to build a solar powered home that showcases solutions for modern green technology. Check out the time lapse video below or visit the Solar Decathlon website to learn more.