Archives for April 2019

At the end of 2018 we donated some 662 Titanium Round Bar, 5″ Diameter to the NIU Baja Team. Due to machining limitations, they were unfortunately unable to use the titanium in this year’s vehicle, but were able to develop a design to create axles for the following year’s competition.  Stefanie (Industrial System Engineering Major) shares with us the importance of this program for students like herself to grow personally and technically.  With the amount of weight reduction they were able to achieve this year, we look forward to seeing how well their car does once they are able to use the titanium for next year’s competition.

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This year we had the pleasure of supporting Northwestern Baja Racing Team, for the first time, with a material donation. PTG donated 662 Titanium Round Bar, 2.441″ Dia. George, Suspension Lead and Chief Engineer, was able to share with us about the vehicle and the benefits he’s experienced from being part of the team!

PTG: Can you give a brief history on your team? What’s your role? How has being a part of this benefited you?

George: Northwestern Baja has been around since the mid 80’s, but went to a skeleton crew of 2 people for a few years until about 2008 when 3 students halfway built a car, and then 2011-2012/2013 when a few legends finished the car and made it rules legal. That car is our first car, Spot, weighing in at over 550+ lbs. Knuckles was the 2013-2014/2015 car having been competed both years to correct issues with the initial radical design change that was at least 150+ lbs lighter. 2015-2016 (Elbows) was the year where our team really took off with good documentation and the use of more exact calculations for tribology and mechanical design. 2016-2017 (Bongo) was the first car I worked on as a freshman, machining shafts and welding the chassis together. It was very similar to Elbows but roomier with more driver clearance. 2017-2018 (Dino) was the year where we reoriented our goals as a team, our priorities and excelled in our machining. For 2017-2018 I was Manufacturing Lead where I helped tool out and setup machines for making the gear box housing and using the conversational lathe to its fullest ability. Knuckles and Elbows both struggled as cars with the gearbox input shaft constantly shearing due to an unaccounted for bending stress from the CVT pulley. Dino was the year where we fixed that issue and stopped failing Shaft 1. The cost of that was a shaft that grew to a nominal size of about 25mm in diameter from a previous 17mm. This year I was the Suspension Lead and de jure Chief Engineer (within the past 2 months due to the chief engineer graduating early). I’ve always been the one of the guys that knew everything that was up with the car and had a hand at some point with the manufacture of all the components. I have learned so much more than what your standard classroom experience has to offer and I have even learned what its like to be one of the guys making parts designed by someone else and learning all the issues that can arise from simple oversights. [Read more…]

We were happy to support Ohio Northern’s SAE Baja team with a donation of varying diameters of 6-4 and 662 round bar. We look forward to seeing how their team and vehicle performs in the upcoming competitions!

Performance Titanium Group,

The Ohio Northern SAE Baja Team would like to thank Performance Titanium Group for their outstanding support of our team for the 2018-19 year. PTG has allowed us to explore the advantages and challenges that are associated with advanced materials such as Titanium. This year was our team’s first experience with using Titanium for components on the car. PTG was kind enough to donate several round blanks of their Ti 6Al-6V-2Sn and 6Al-4V alloys that were used for making gears. Utilizing Titanium’s superior strength to weight ratio, we were able to reduce rotational weight and moment of inertia, while maintaining sufficient strength. These gears are 45% percent lighter than our steel set, resulting in over 4lbs of weight loss in our gears from last year to this year. 

In addition to the many benefits that are associated with using Titanium over steel, some challenges were encountered along the way. The most prominent of these challenges was learning how to machine it. During our first time turning Titanium, we got the tooling and chips so hot they started to glow! Thus, we discovered Titanium’s poor heat dissipation and learned that coolant is an absolute must when machining it. However, after some research and trial and error, we figured out pretty well how to machine it by adjusting feeds/speeds/depth of cut.

In the coming weeks, the ONU Baja Team will be competing at the SAE sanctioned Baja race in Tennessee, where we are eager to see the benefit the Titanium gears will provide. Additionally, ONU will be competing in SAE races in California and New York this year.

Thank you again for supporting our team! – Polar Bear Racing

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