Summary of Schedule:
The following schedule highlights the major milestones and goals of the RC Baja Steering and suspension. Fall quarter (September - December) of the 2023-2024 school year consisted of sections 1, 2, and 3 of the Gantt chart (Fig. 4) and the overall design of the car. In section 1, the proposal and report writing are layed out, section 2 highlights the analysis that took place to verify designs with hand written calculations on green sheets, and in section 3 the documentation of the designs are layed out, documentation consists of CAD models being created and shop drawings being constructed.
During winter quarter (Fig. 5 January - March) the main focus was manufacturing the RC car. Section 4 of the Gantt chart notes the manufacturing of each individual part, and in section 5 the total/overall assembly of the RC car is highlighted. At the end of winter quarter the RC Baja is fully assembled and is functional. Much of the operations that happened during winter quarter consisted of machining, 3D printing, sanding, deburring, drilling, tapping, and revising past designs to achieve the greatest amount of success.
Spring quarter (Fig 6. March - June) consisted of overall testing of the RC Baja and in the Gantt chart the overall testing is broken down into into section 6 and 7. Section 6 is the device evaluation where testing methods are created, like drop tests, top speed tests, overall function of the suspension geometry etc. Section 7 highlights deliverables of the project, the web design (website), testing reports, and final presentations to show off the entire scope of the project.
All of these major milestones are laid out in schedule form of the Gantt chart with estimated times to complete a task and actual times that it took to complete each task are shown (Fig 4, 5, 6).
From start to end of the RC Baja the project remained ahead or if not, on schedule to be finished. The engineers worked diligently and efficient to start tasks ahead of time, and finish them before they really needed to be done. This gave the engineer some extra buffer time to have incase something went wrong, or extra time was needed and the engineer did not have to stress, or worry how something was going to get done on time.
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Gantt Chart: Fall, Winter, Spring 2023-2024
Figure 4. Sections 1-3 of Gantt Chart
Figure 5. Sections 4 and 5 of Gantt Chart
Figure 6. Sections 6 and 7 of Gantt Chart
Budget:
The entirety of the RC Baja is funded by Chayce Williams and Caden Harris. No outsourced funding and support is received for this project. Majority of the projects budget is consumed during winter quarter (January - March) and this also means the majority of manufacturing is done during this time. Excluding allocated time and wages for this time period, costs from outsourcing sheet metal design to SendCutSend has the highest cost, followed by parts and fasteners. The total allocated budget for the RC Baja steering and suspension is $5,775 ($1,400 for parts, fasteners, and materials) ($4375 for Engineering labor). There has been an allocated safety buffer of funding in each category to make any modifications, and or revisions to parts that need to be done post manufacturing during the winter quarter.
All the way until the end of the year the engineer has remained well under budget for all buyout parts, fasteners, raw material, labor, and, and outsourced manufacturing (SendCutSend). All funded like mentioned above was provided from personal funding by Chayce Williams and Caden Harris. And this source of funding did not change throughout the entire year from the beginning to end.
Table D.1 - Project Budget
Figure 7.
Figure 8. Total Budget