Archives for May 2019

PTG had the opportunity to donate 662 titanium round bar to the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Baja SAE Team for the 2018/2019 racing season. Unfortunately, they were unable to find a sponsor that could machine the titanium into parts for them, but they have big plans for next year’s car! We interviewed Josh, the team’s Chief Engineer, to find out more.

 

PTG: Tell us a little about your team and the role you play. How has being a part of UIUC Baja benefited you? What will you take away from this experience and be able to apply to future professional opportunities?

Josh: I’m currently the Chief Engineer of the Baja SAE team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My role involves setting project goals and validating engineering decisions through software like Ansys FEA. The club has taught me real applicable engineering skills that will be useful in the engineering industry post graduation. These skills include project management and machining of components, both of which aren’t specifically taught in the engineering curriculum and are critical to working in the engineering world. [Read more…]

Chico State Baja Racing Team is in full swing of competition this weekend in Gorman, California! Aaron Ahlers, in charge of the drivetrain, tells us a little about the experience they had making parts out of the 662 titanium round bar we donated.

This is the first time our club has been fortunate enough to work with titanium, so we were a bit apprehensive about machining it at first. We did mostly turning operations to make the parts. This went pretty smooth in our Haas ST10 as long as we kept fresh carbide inserts on the tools and used the feeds and speeds that HSM Advisor gave us. The milling operations went very smooth as well since we are lucky enough to have some of the best carbide tools made by Xceliron specifically for titanium. We did run into issues on drilling and tapping, as we did not have any coolant drills or taps that were meant for titanium. After learning what we have about how it machines, I’m sure that we can find even better uses that will cut out more weight and make our car more durable. That is if we are lucky enough to get more next year!

We can’t wait to see how they do! To see more about the team, visit their website https://chicobaja.org