Intro

The goal of this project was to design and manufacture seven remote control cars. These cars
were built using the resources in the shop in building 35. Even though this was a small scale
project, many decisions were made from a manufacturing point of view, where something like
this would typically be mass produced.

The team first focused on designing the car to be as simple as possible. This meant fewer parts to
manufacture and assembly down the line. We also made sure to design in modules so that each
module could be assembled separately, then put together at the end. This greatly helped later.
Next we went to fabrication where we decided all of our manufacturing methods and started to
make parts. Once this was well on its way we started to test the overall assembly. Once the car
was ready to drive we tested the car overall and made the necessary changes.


Design and Manufacturing
As stated previously, our design philosophy was easy manufacture, easy assembly. Our simple
components and individual sub-assemblies are evidence of the execution of this philosophy and
will be further described below.

Our chassis was simple water-jetted aluminum with thermoformed skidplate. Front end assembly
is one sub unit consisting of wheels, tires, suspension, steering control, and bumper. This entire
assembly attaches with just two screws that both fasten the whole front assembly and align all
components. The steering yoke mount is made of sheet metal and also serves to properly space
our suspension.

The rear assembly is also an entire sub-unit and consists of the motor, drive gear, rear axle, and
rear wheel/tire units all neatly confined to a C-channel section. C-channel was chosen as the
main structure for this rear sub-assembly because it can be purchased off the shelf and quickly
machined to have the features required. This entire sub-assembly easily attaches to the chassis
via two tapered head screws.

Our control box was designed to be made out of a single piece of sheet metal. After water jetting
the flat pattern, six bends are made and a delrin handle is attached to two upright flanges. These
two flanges each serve dual purposes. The front flange is the mount for the servo, and the rear
flange is the mount for the banana clip. The electronic components housed in the control box are
all attached with double sided tape to the base of the box. The battery sits velcroed to one of the
side flanges of the control box. The angled flanges on the rear of the control box serve the
purpose of helping to align the banana clips for quick attachment and removal.

Our design process started with several ideas, but we ultimately focused on an elegant, and easy
to assemble design. As well, we focused on having complete sub-assemblies in anticipation of
mass producing this item and reducing assembly times and bottlenecks in the process.

Our design has minimal parts, ease of access for all fasteners, and ease of adjustability on
components such as steering (toe-in, toe-out), steering yoke tension, wheel bearing tension, and
king-pin pivot tension.

Project Time Estimates
Getting this project done in time involved a lot of individual and group efforts. A decent amount
of time was spent as a group during the preliminary design stage of the project, as well as other
progress review meetings.

Individual and subgroup efforts were put into CAD/CAM modeling, part fabrication, assembly,
and testing and troubleshooting, based on the level of proficiency in a particular area.

The total amount of man-hours spent on the project was about 524 hours.

Table 1 below provides a summary of the tasks performed, estimates of the amount of time spent,
and individual contributions towards the success of the project.
Table 1: Task and Time Sheet

NB: See original table in Dropbox: Time Estimate for Project.xlsx

Group Dynamics
Team 1 Members
The Tumbler team consists of seven brilliant MIT graduate students with expertise on
mechanical design, CAD drawing, fabrication, and modeling. This year, they made the best ever
car for Professor Martin Culpeppers class 2.810.


Figure 1: Kyle, Obehi, David, Yan, Desoto, Ryan, Nick

Group Strategy
The tumbler teams success is based on a wise job distribution and the synergy that it creates.
Ryan is the one who organizes the whole team, assigns team member tasks to do and makes sure
everything is on the right track. David and Nick are the two super design experts. They bring rich
experience together with design principles from course 2.75 to make the best design ever. Yan
and Obehi are two great modeling analysts. They also collaborate with Ryan on documentation
and with David & Nick on CAD drawing. Kyle is a person who really has talent in fabrication.
His naval background trains him to be on schedule, which helps guarantee the accomplishment
of tasks in a timely manner. Joe is able to stand by and think about questions in a different way,
which brings great value into design and fabrication.

At the beginning, the tumbler team held several preliminary groups meeting to come up with the
best possible design by applying principles such as the golden ratio and research on previous car
projects. In the manufacturing process, each team member was able to learn and perform
injection molding for plastic wheels, water jet cutting for cars chassis, sheet metal bending for
control box, thermal forming, and assembly for the whole car. Communication among the team
were efficient through emails, group text messages, and weekly meeting. Individual team
member consistently performed their specific responsibility to the best of their abilities and
shared the documents and drawings through Dropbox to allow the teamwork transaction and
revision control to take place. Individuals contribution and team synergy make a difference in
helping the Tumbler team achieve its ultimate objective.



Exploded Views:

Figure 2: Front Assembly Exploded View

Figure 3: Control Box Exploded View

Figure 4: Rear Exploded View

Lessons Learned
In the design stage, we could have more carefully considered tolerancing, as it played a huge role
during assembly, leading to longer assembly times.

We also often rushed into assembling the car without careful consideration of the entire parts of
the car, and so often had to disassemble and reassemble, wasting time. Also, some parts which
needed to be ordered when a design had been fixed, were not ordered at the right times, and led
to delays in car assembly.

Also, as a group of seven, scheduling for meetings proved difficult sometimes, but better use of
scheduling tools like doodle could have been taken advantage of.

Conclusion
Overall, the car came out well. Many iterations on the design were made as issues came up in
manufacturing and assembly. This meant that changes were being made late in the semester, but
the car ultimately worked very well. This took a collaborative effort of all all the group members.
Everyone is satisfied with the performance of the car and are looking forward to race day.

Our Components


Figure 5: Rear Tire

Figure 6: Rear Wheel Hub

Figure 7: Rear Axles



Figure 8: Front Suspension


Figure 9: Front Wheel Hub


Figure 10: Front Bumper




Figure 11: Steering Yoke


Figure 12: Chassis


Figure 13: C-channel



Figure 14: Control Box - Flat Pattern



Figure 15: Control Box - Folded

Figure 16: Control Box Handle


Figure 17: Banana Clip Mount