Tooling wing test

First tooling parts made from CAD - CAM - CNC on tooling board 600 kg/m3. Easy to machine and good surface finishing. To improve the surface , I will apply body sealer afterwards, before the release agent.

First Composite Parts

Hi all. Following the decision about putting on hold the engine testing, the modelling of the car is started. As a system check, I modelled this wing, following F1 standards. The CATIA model of the rear upper main plain has the intel for composite design of the part: ply pieces, splices, inserts, etc. The structure is quite complex and has Rohacell cores to reinforce the skins, plus two spars running across the wing span. The wing is 1:3 scale, meaning a total span of 252 mm. DXF are produced automatically to cut the plies on prepreg from the CAD model.

Material definition is now still to be defined both for part and tooling. This design and built exercise will prove the manufacturing cycle as well, since will use my Optimum BF20L vario to machine the patterns and final component. The CNC program will be made with Visual Mill based on the solid model created in Catia v5.

Time to move on

Even though the IT3 engine is not finished, I decided to put its development on hold. I have changed job and am living away from my home town, in where my workshop is. Hence, I will get started with the design of the car (chassis, composites). This means, there will be some uncertainties about the engine fitting into the whole, but I am sure I can get around it.

I expect the design to be finished somewhere around Oct - Nov 2013. The model and aero surfaces will be finished end of this year. The rest of the detail design will be finished afterwards, including the latest design of the 2013 cars. The particular car to be made will be determined next year, as the newer the car I chose the better it will look when finished in 2015-2016. The engine will be first designed and then the development will continue on the test bench, untill it is running well, recovering the IT3 work. Car manufacturing will start end 2013, along with the engine testing.

Follow me to learn more about the progress with the car design, which looks very exciting! A lot of composite parts to be designed and built! I will try to make some posts about composite manufacturing techniques as it is quite interesting for model making but actually just a few ones use it.

IT3 test engine preliminary design 2

The preliminary design is almost completed for the 20cc single cylinder test engine. It is expected that specific test components will be produced in the following weeks to assess the design of the cooling and lubrication systems.
The concept designs for the cooling and lubircation system pumps can be seen in the picture below. The final layuot of the pumps will not be incorporated to the engine to reduce complexity. See in green the test water pump. and in purple, the aspirating oil pump. The distribution system uses gears instead of chain, as was used in the previous test engines IT1, IT2. This creates a high degree of complexity during the machinning steps.

The new engine IT3 is on its way! Still some more months of design but will be ready soon. A big change is increased capacity to take advantadge of scale increase (from 1:5 to 1:3). Total capacity will be 160 cc!

The bore is now set on 35 mm, which means that it will not use the current ASP engine spare parts. The piston is from the GX Honda engine series. Max speed is estimated around 12000 rpm with gasoline fuel. The lenght of the engine will be around 200 mm with 4 valves per cylinder.

As you can see, it will have water cooling and for first time.

As promised, here are the pictures  of the IT2 engine! It did well!

Only 3 months after the first engine was fired up, the new engine run last weekend already! I hope to be able to upload some pictures this weekend! This is a good start but it still needs some tweaks. Aim is to change from methanol to gasoline!

This is the IT1 engine running video!!!

Project progress Update
The new test engine (IT2) as I call it, has been put together. Tests will start soon to adjust it and fine tunning.

Several parts were made from scratch, whereas all the head components were taken from the IT1 engine. In the next picture, you can see the machinning of the con rod in my CNC milling machine. A 2mm end drill is used to make the pocket in the body. The con rod is made of two separate parts, that are then bolted together. After this, the head drill is made and the bearings are press fit.

 This is the size of the block and piston. You can compare it with a caliper, the piston is 21.5 mm in diameter and the stroke is just 8.5 mm! it can also be seen in this picture the finished conrod, with its oil channel. Ball bearings are used to hold the crankshaft on the engine block.

 The crankshaft is some quite nice part to make. It is swaped from the lathe to the milling machine several times before it can be ready. This was the first time I used the new CNC rotary table. The journal shaft is quite thick, because it represents the real crankshaft that will be much longer and carry more power. The crankshaft counterweights are rather small, because I use a heavy alloy insert which is more dense than the steel.

 All main parts exposed. The liner is only 21.4 mm tall. The piston skirt is most of the time exposed also outside the liner. This helps the oil to cool it down. On the right hand side of the picture, there is the crankcase. The crankshaft cavity is round, machined to improve efficiency. This is meant for a dry sump system, which is not used now, but will be incorporated in IT3 or IT4.

 This is the bottom view of the engine, with the components from the picture above are assembled together. It is hard to see on the picture, but the clearances of the crankcase cavity, crankcase and piston are below than 1mm. This is why it is so small!

Finnally a picture of the complete engine. At the moment it is being adjusted meanwhile some details are finished. I will use a hand driller to start up the engine. The aim is that it reaches above 15000 rpm... I'll keep you posted!

Red Bull Racing RB07 - 2011 Formula One World Champion


Project Introduction - aims


After having finished the Renault R26 project, I decided to start looking to a follow up. The aim of building the scale models always had  the objective of building as many parts by myself as possible to get a realistic  looking (and functional) car. I started back in 1999 with the McLaren, which featured a sheet metall monocoque and cast iron V8 non-running engine. Then, with the F2004 model a new genere of RC-model was created as a combination of an external realistic car with RC car internals that could be raced. The car was made in glass fiber with some metal fabricated parts. The next car, R26 was an evolution rather than a revolution in the sense that there was little phylosophy change in the goal of the project. However, all parts of the car got improved and the package was much more complete.

With the input received from the Youtube comments and other online sources, I feel that some people out there is more focused on the performance, rather than in the aesthetics. All these comments are welcome and every input is valuable. Having said that, it was never the intention of the R26 model to be a good racing car for RC standards but a realistic dynamic show car, on the basis of an F1 car at 1:5 scale.

The state of the art in RC models is moving more and more to highly sofisticated electronic vehicles that carry cameras, data acquisition systems, auto-pilots, etc onboard. This is preety cool and allows the user to add extra functionality to its model, creating a more realistic experience. At the moment, all this technology is more applied onto planes but it is definelty something very intresting for a car.

The scope for the new project was set to incorporate extra functionality (with onboard cameras, real time telemetry, more pilot-to-car interaction) and a trully focus on performance. All that, on the basis of previous models philosophy: self builfing a Formula 1 1/5 car model.

Most of the electronics are like add-ons onto your car, with little impact on the design. However, in order to improve performance to higher level, a radical change had to be made on the design. It was clear that the current engines used (1/8 engine on a 1/5 car) even thou suit very well the aestetics of the car, allowing for a very tight rear end, cannot deliver enough torque to move a +6kg car as a normal 1/8th RC car would. No available RC engines suit this requirements and therefore a new engine has to be self designed and buit. The only way to obtain higher power and keep the realism of the car is to run a multi cylinder engine, that can be packed together with the chassis and driveline inside the rear bodywork. That will bring extra realism and value to the scale model and at the same time make the project extremelly challenging.

Car choice

By mid 2011, the Formula 1 season was well underway and the championchip was almost decided. At the end of the season, with both titles secured for two years in a row by Red Bull, it is the strongest team at the moment and leads the technical development of Formula 1. The car looks phenomenal and presents many technical details that differ from the previous cars I had built. Here are some examples: pull-rod suspension, moveable rear wing, larger front wing and narrower sidepods and rear end. All this combined with the new slick tires and cleaner aerodynamic features.

Here are some of the interesting details featured by the Red Bull RB07 (all of them are taken from 2010 RB06, Owners' Workshop Manual, Ed. Haynes):

Engine showing the oil tank, that is mounted behind the chassis. Note the exhaust point down to create the blown difuser effect.

Front suspension assembly with multimatic dampers (bottom tilted and horizontal top). Antiroll bar horizontally mounted.

Gear box core exposed. It actually belongs to the RB4. Each gear is 12 mm wide.

To complete the literature review, here are two good sources that for sure will prove usefull:

RedBull Racing F1 car (RB06 2010) Ed. Haynes: quite some interesting book with detail pictures of F1 internals. Most of them are from old Red Bull cars but are still valuable. It is interesting that the pull - rod suspension and gear box area are not shown at all through pictures or diagrams.

Minichamps Miniature Models - Red Bull RB06 (2010): There is no model available of the Red Bull RB07 that can be purchased at a reasonable price. No big changes are found between the 2011 and 2010 cars in therms of chassis.

Welcome

Welcome to the Bernimodels' forum! now you can send all your questions and comments so the comunity can learn and share. Visit www.bernimodels.com!