Adding Gas Springs to Our 3D Vehicle

 

    

    After finishing our teams video for the Shell Eco Marathon Virtual Inspection, Mr. Grosinger instructed us to make improvements to our designs to make it more realistic. He told me to fix the opening mechanisms for the body to make it able to come up and down with a realistic mechanism that can be used in real life. 

    The first thing was to search up what gas springs actually were, and then I figured out that there was gas springs in McMaster Carr. After finding the gas springs on McMasterCarr, I downloaded it to a 3D file and put it on Onshape.

        After downloading the file and placing it on OnShape, I was going to add the pieces to the vehicle but had to modify the pieces to make them move and fit in the places I wanted them to go. I added some sliders to keep the two pipes going up and down, as well as adding limiters to keep the pipes from going to far and staying in a certain range. 

 

    I finished the modifications and created little placers to place or screw in the bolts to keep the gas springs in place. The first place to add the stands was to be placed on the body and I used process of elimination to figure out at what height and width I should add the stands on the body.

    After creating the stands on the body the next thing to do was to add stands on the canopy and clam shell. I also did the process of elimination to get the right placement for the stands on the canopy.

    The placement had to be placed in the canopy frame to be able to create a realistic placement and to keep the gas springs from going through the body and the canopy.  The next thing to do was to create stands on the clamshell. 

    The clamshell was very difficult to create stands on since the program had some trouble creating what I wanted but then I got to do somewhat what I wanted. This was also very tricky to use elimination to find the placement of these stands but using a video, I was able to get the somewhat realistic plcement.

   I had to get rid of some parts on the gas springs and this allowed the gas spring to move without having to go through the body and also made the gas springs look more realistic. The gas springs were fastened into the holes that where made in the stands and threaded as well.

    I first placed the gas springs between the body and canopy. The gasp springs also limited the movement of the canopy which made the canopy only go up to a certain height without a limit.

    This new addition of the parts made the movement of the canopy more natural look of closing and opening. The same thing went for the clam shell but I could only make one suitable stand and actually made the closing and opening cooler. 

    I showed my teacher the new additions and was told I did a good job, I was also doing another project in class, because of hybrid, and made another blog on it. Here is the blog to my welding, past OnShape blog, and my linkedin.