Fringe Racing
Buggy design overview
2014-2019
Fringe Racing is part of the university-wide annual racing competition called Sweepstakes. Fringe constructs a new vehicle, or "Buggy," every year.
These are constructed from carbon fiber and paper honeycomb shells. A small-figured driver lays inside each buggy. She steers around the course both on the uphills and during free rolls. The buggy is manually pushed on the uphills.
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Each year, I construct a new buggy to race. This year, I was Head Mechanic for the team. I led the team in designing and building the new buggy, named Blind Faith.
Team-oriented process
Fringe has been notorious for excellent buggy design. I was lucky enough to have designed a buggy, Blind Faith, that won the annual Design Competition. Blind Faith also placed 4th with our Women's A team.
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When leading builds, I focused on establishing the team as a learning environment where each member could contribute to or learn about any aspect of the buggy they wanted to.
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Building a buggy consists of several carbon-fiber wraps around a foam mold.
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We perform numerous carbon-fiber layups throughout the build process including several reinforcement layers.
I have manually machined metal parts for the steering and braking mechanisms. I also have 3D printed parts and for complex steering parts and driver comfort parts. For each of these, I led sessions teaching younger mechanics each of these tasks and methods.
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While some hardware is machined by hand, we do outsource some more complex parts to be machined. As a result, I have experience with designing and marking up engineering drawings to be sent out for quotes.
All-around fun
I've gotten to push on Raceday each of the last four years. This year I was lucky enough to push the buggy I designed on Raceday.
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Whether it's pushing, being a mechanic, or hopefully driving one day, I love all the ridiculous, fantastic aspects of buggy.
We wake up at nearly 4AM on weekends to practice, spend arguably more time working on buggy than on academics, and it's all worth every second.
