Learning Previous Years: Manufacturing the 2012 Jig

Some times it can be unclear where best to improve over previous years, in technological terms, when there is a limited amount of track test data to rely on in order to feed into a new design. Mass and reliability are obvious areas, but less obvious and just as important are the lessons from manufacturing. Too often in the past lessons learnt the hard-way have been lost as one set of team members leaves, and a new joins. Hence this year, we have put much more emphasis on interacting with alumni over the year to maximise knowledge transfer.

One example of this is the chassis jig for 2012. Again we will be using our ever reliable water-jet, however the wood will be varnished and the amount of time in contact with the water will be minimised. A small change, but last year we discovered moisture induced warping of the plywood resulted in a chassis twist of a few degrees. Small manufacturing changes can bring about big, quantifiable performance changes. Additionally, by using varnish we avoid the other option of using ‘marine plywood’, which would also not suffer from warp, but would increase jig material costs by 300%.

Wood will again be supplied by our sponsors Ridgeons Timber merchants of Cambridge. You can find out about them at: ridgeons.co.uk/