CTL Engineering Blog Howco continues its support for University of Glasgow Racing in the Formula Student competition 2016

Formula Student (FS) is Europe's most established educational motorsport competition, run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.Backed by industry and high profile engineers such as our Patron Ross Brawn OBE, the competition aims to inspire and develop enterprising and innovative young engineers.Universities from across the globe are challenged to design and build a single-seat racing car in order to compete in static and dynamic events, which demonstrate their understanding and test the performance of the vehicle.Howco have been supporting UGR for 2 years in this prestigious event and held this year at Silverstone in the UK.http://formulastudent.imeche.org/formula-student/We provide a manufacturing service free of charge.The students visit our manufacturing facility to see the wide range of manufacturing processes we provide to the market.We afforded them the opportunity to witness their parts in manufacture and inspection and experience.In 2015Howco machined Hubs for UGR from free issue raw material.This year the students approached us with a considerably harder challenge.The Formula Student regulations require the engine to be throttled by a restricted 20mm diameter air intake tube.To maximise the engine performance, the delivery path from the intake restrictor to the engine has to be carefully designed to avoid turbulence and maximise fluid flow.For the 2016 car, UGR focused a lot of design time on this intake system and came up with a meticulously designed and stunning looking design.The UGR team approached Howco with a number of parts including a thin walled Intake Plenum, which acts as a manifold splitting the flow from the restricted intake to four delivery pipes, 4 inlet trumpets, intricately machined fuel injector housings, and the fuel delivery manifold.All parts were designed to be machined from solid blocks of aluminium which UGR supplied.The first task was to review design for manufacture with the UGR design team, which resulted in a few minor detail changes to make the challenging machining process a little easier and to accommodate existing tooling.The Plenum Chamber and Injector Housings were milled from solid on Mazak Horizontal Milling Machines. The Inlet Trumpets and the Fuel Manifold were turned and milled from solid on Mazak Integrex Mill Turn machines.With only 2 weeks to go before the Car launch, UGR hit a problem with the supply of other parts and asked us to manufacture the support plates for the rear axle differential.We were able to come to the rescue and the parts were EDM wire profile cut from aluminium plate, and CNC bored and milled.As the majority of the parts were aluminium, we were able to hand polish the parts to a very high chrome like finish.Once assembled on the car, they really added to a quite stunning looking business end to the car.Mike Beattie, Plant Director at Howco's Irvine manufacturing centre said," Howco are very proud to have been involved with UGR for the last 2 years, to lend our support and experience to the next generation of the engineering industry.The student team have been a real pleasure to work with, showing boundless energy, enthusiasm ingenuity and gratitude, and we wish them every success with the 2016 race programme and their future careers.Talking of which, the Team Principal was unable to make it to the official launch of the 2016 car, as he had just taken up an engineering post in Formula 1. Something we are all very proud of."Read More