June 23 Team Meeting

Today was one of those days that reminds you why we do this.

Seagull Solar ran parallel operations across two campuses here on Staten Island — the McKee team grinding away in the shop, and the Staten Island Tech team working in their engineering lab across the borough. And the Tech students? They graduated high school this morning. Caps, gowns, the whole thing. Then they went straight back to school and picked up their soldering irons — still in their graduation clothes.

That’s the kind of dedication that doesn’t show up on a transcript.

Staten Island Tech: Soldering Through the Celebration

The solar cell work at Tech is deep into its stride. Our array requires 26 individual strips of cells, all of which need to be tabbed, strung, and soldered before they can be laid into the array frame. As of today, 11 strips are complete. Our Tech students worked in shifts around graduation ceremonies and other senior-day activities, but the momentum never stopped. The cells are small, the connections are critical, and the margin for error is essentially zero.Watching our teammates solder in their dress clothes, fresh off a graduation stage, is something we won’t forget.

McKee Shop: Roll Bar, Ribs, and a New Pivot Design

The McKee side had a long, productive day running from 8 AM to 5 PM. Here’s what we got done:

Roll Bar Fabrication — The roll bar is fully fabricated and ready for final welding tomorrow. Once that weld is complete, the seat and four-point harness go into their permanent home. That’s a major milestone for the chassis.

Array Frame Stiffening — This was our big materials push of the day. We ripped a full sheet of pink XPS foam into 1.5” strips — the same height as the angle aluminum frame — giving us a set of ribs to stiffen the polycarbonate panel substrate. The polycarbonate was sanded with 36-grit at the bonding locations, blown off, and wiped clean. Then 3M 5200 fast-cure adhesive was applied and the foam strips were pressed firmly into place, creating a foam-core sandwich between the aluminum frame members.

The goal is to eliminate the flex in the polycarbonate panels that will eventually carry our solar cells. Once the 5200 cures, we’ll load-test the rigidity. If we need more stiffness, we have additional 5200 on the way to cove the ribs into the frame, and fiberglass cloth with epoxy resin standing by if we need to go full composite.

Plasma-Cut Pivot Mounts — We also designed and cut prototype pivot mounts on the plasma cutter today. The new geometry moves the pivot point slightly outboard of the main frame, allowing the array to tilt past vertical — giving us the ability to chase late-afternoon and evening sun aggressively. Several prototypes were cut to validate the geometry before committing to final material.

New T-Shirt Designs — Shoutout to Winnie for bringing some team culture energy. Designs are up for a vote.

Where We Stand

With the roll bar going permanent tomorrow and the seat and harness getting their final installation, the chassis is nearly buttoned up. The array stiffening is curing overnight. Eleven of 26 cell strips are soldered. The pivot mount is prototyped.Our target is a fully assembled car by Friday — leaving all of next week for shakedown testing, systems checks, and whatever adjustments reality demands before our July 12 departure to Texas Motor Speedway.

We’re close. The team is locked in. And somewhere on Staten Island tonight, there are a few new high school graduates who spent their graduation day building a solar race car.