Please introduce your university and team!
Align Racing UiA is a brand new FS team from the University of Agder, located in the southern part of Norway. Although a Formula Student team has been the talk of our university for some years, we finally set our mind to actually starting a team last February. Five months later we had over 150 applicants from our university with, backgrounds ranging from engineering to economics and multimedia students. With this huge interest we were able to put together a team of about 65 students, allowing us to set high targets and we have already registered at FSUK as a class 1 team.
Align Racing UiA is an entirely extracurricular activity and a non-profit organization; we have no paid positions and are completely student run. Together with the university we are working on a platform where the members of our team can get credits in Formula Student related coursework. Furthermore the work we do in Align Racing UiA will be open-sourced after each competition in the hopes that this may benefit other students working on similar projects.
What made you join Formula Student?
As students we feel that we can never get too much practical experience during our studies. Although our university has a practical educational approach, the actual hands on experience is limited by the hours needed for a good theoretical grounding. With this in mind we researched several different international engineering competitions ranging from car projects (like FS and Shell Eco) to robotics projects building mars rovers and drones.
Our conclusion was that although the technical aspects of all these competitions give great opportunity for practical learning, Formula Student provides the greatest opportunity for a “real” practical experience where a true multidisciplinary team could benefit from the result. This gives us real life experience in having engineers work with an economics department and a marketing team to translate the technical language to a broader audience. Additionally, due to our large team, we have a dedicated HR department to keep the team running smoothly.
The added Driverless category was also a strong selling point for us, as the majority of our team are mechatronics students which brings a relevent new aspect into the competition. It’s in our 3-5 year plan to be able to compete in this category as well as the EV category.
But most importantly, race cars are awesome! Who does not want to be part of a team building a formula style race car? (We totally agree - FS team)
What have been your biggest challenges this year and how have you overcome these?
Teamwork! As it turns out, organizing a multidisciplinary team with about 65 people and 10 different fields of study is no easy task. Our main challenge here has been finding the best way to communicate. It has been challenging and we’ve used everything from project management tools to posters on the walls - the electronics department have even tried some “magic smoke” signals! However teamwork continues to be one of our main focuses and we are learning and getting better, and is that not why we do this?
As a first year team, funding has also been a challenge. We have no prior work to show, there is little knowledge of Formula Student in the region and we have big ambitions. Now that we have moved into our production phase with some work to show, it has become easier to gather the funding we need. Luckily we have had enormous support from our university, both in terms of facilities, hard cash and help in showcasing the project. As mentioned the team is completely self driven, so the university has put great trust in our ability to follow through.
What’s your proudest moment so far?
This is a hard one! Being part of a founding team we are breaking new barriers each day that pushes us toward a shared dream of standing on the silverstone racetrack already with a functioning car this summer. One milestone was when we got retweeted by Formula Student, our first publication in international media, and of course this opportunity to be featured by IMechE!
One of our earliest goals has already been achieved and we have created a platform where bachelor and master students can work together seamlessly and share their experience. We think this has great potential to increase the level of our university’s students, not just our members but the student community as a whole and there are already some great examples of this positive effect.
When recruiting for such an extensive project we were afraid of how many members we would lose through the year. We planned for up to a 30% loss, but almost all the members are still with us. This feels like a great achievement in itself and if you can ask each member of the team, they will have their own proudest moment as well.
What are your objectives for this year’s competition?
This year’s main focus is on the team and organisation: we want our members to have a great time at Silverstone and additionally to build a strong organizational structure so the next year’s team can hit the ground running with the 2019 car. In order to achieve our long term goals of having electric and possibly driverless cars within 5 years, this seems like a smart place to start.
We do not have a final ranking goal, as a first year team we aim to complete all the static and dynamic tests with a functioning car where robustness and ease of design is key. To compensate for our lack of experience. the goal is to have a drivable car by the end of April. This way we will hopefully be able to work out all the kinks before the competition.
Our goal for this year is to receive the prize for the best newcomer and we are working hard towards being the best in marketing. This is not only a great opportunity to get more support and show our work, but also a great learning experience for our marketing department.
How close are you to finishing your car?
There is still a lot to do: the frame is nearly finished and parts we have ordered have started arriving so we are now ready to assemble large parts of the car. There is still some manufacturing to do, including the oil tank, gas tank, uprights, wheel hubs and brackets for the differential to mention a few!
Having access to 3D printing has been of great value in our design process for prototyping and we will even use this for a few components like air intakes and the break lights.
Our focus this year is to learn and make a robust car so we have gone with well tested, readily available materials like steel, aluminium and 3D printed brackets.
We have tested a honeycomb aluminium crash cell at a crash testing facility north of Oslo. The initial design failed, but we learned a lot from the attempt and are traveling to test our new crash cell soon.
What advice would you give for fellow teams?
I’m not sure if we are in the position to give out too much advice, we do not have the answers, yet. But this might also be the best advice we can give. Through not having the answers and working with the university, local community and national FS teams we have gained a lot. During the process of founding our team we reached out to Revolve NTNU and ION Racing UiS and they shared a lot of their knowledge with us, as we have a common interest in building up the national FS community. We had one of the Revolve NTNU founders on a visit to help with the startup organization and had a keynote motivational speak during our kick off event to help with recruitment. We have also had a close collaboration with ION racing UiS who has shared a lot of technical knowledge, they went as far as sending two of their most experienced team members to attend our concept screening, where they helped us avoid some beginner mistakes and even gave us some design ideas they were working with.
What will Align Racing / a Norwegian team bring to FSUK?
Norwegian waffles, we will bring with us a lot of waffles to FSUK! We will also bring a happy team to cheer us on with our random and unsynchronized group chant!
How can we keep up to date with you?
To follow our process you can hit us up on facebook, instagram or twitter, we have about 4-6 posts each week. All our videos are also posted on Youtube, amongst other technical videos we run a weekly interview series where you get to know a new team member each week and see what drives them, published every wednesday at 12.00 CET.
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Alignracing/
Instagram: @alignracing -
https://www.instagram.com/alignracing/
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/alignracinguia
Twitter: @alignracing -
https://twitter.com/Alignracing
Web:
http://www.alignracing.no/