June 16 Team Meeting

Today was one of those days that felt long in the best way. The team was in the shop from 8:00 AM until 6:15 PM, and by the end of it we had real, visible progress on three major systems: the array frame, the brakes, and the driver interface. Here's the rundown.

Big milestone today - the aluminum frame for our solar array is welded up. Gino picked up the 6160 aluminum stock from Granger in Brooklyn a couple of days ago, and Crouton and Alex put in the work to weld the frame to spec: 4.95 m x 1.75 m, almost 8.7 square meters of charging area. The frame itself is built primarily from 1.5 inch x 1.5 inch angle aluminum, 1/8 inch thick, which should give us a strong, light base to build on.

A few months ago we were planning a sleek, fully enclosed aerodynamic shape for the array. With time getting tighter, we made the call to go with an overhead array instead. It maximizes our charging area and meaningfully simplifies the engineering and fabrication, which matters a lot this late in the build. The array will sit on a swivel mount, letting us angle it toward the sun during the low-angle morning and evening hours, squeezing out extra charge time at the edges of the day. On top of the frame, polycarbonate panels will be secured with silicone and fasteners, and the whole structure will bolt down to the car at a minimum of three points on the frame.

Rhiley has been heads-down on the brake system, and today it paid off - the whole team pitched in to bleed every caliper. We pulled each one off, reoriented it to chase out every last air bubble, and bled the lines fully. The result: the pedal feels firm and the car stops beautifully.

For anyone keeping track of the system layout: the front brakes run four calipers split into two sets, uppers and lowers. Circuit one ties the lower front calipers together with the single rear caliper. Circuit two is the redundant system, running independently to the two upper front calipers. Two separate pedals, two separate circuits, both doing their job.

Kieren kicked off work on a custom 3D-printed steering wheel. It's going to house our driver information system directly in the wheel, a large LCD screen plus driver-accessible buttons, all within arm's reach instead of bolted to the dash.

Matthew and Gino tackled getting data out of the motor controller and in front of the driver. They built a USB serial tool that pulls the motor controller's output into an Arduino, which then displays it live: battery state, wheel speed, brake engagement, and everything else the controller reports. Basically, if the motor controller knows it, the driver can now see it. The next step is getting that same data out to the rest of the convoy using low-power, long-range radio, so chase vehicles can see what the driver sees in real time.

Huge shoutout to Winnie, who got our scrapbook submitted right at the wire on Monday. It turned out beautifully, and looking back at it is a good reminder of how far the car has come since September, it's gone through a lot of iterations to get here. Link to the scrapbook below.

Also, thank you to Mr. Smolka for lunch today. Pier 76 pizza and hot dogs hit the spot mid-build.

It was a long day, but a genuinely productive one. We've still got a lot left to do before July, but days like this make it feel doable.

Scrapbook link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k98KdTrxccVV-_6RmRriE5pn_1srp5u9/view?usp=drivesdk