Welcoming Our First Newsletter of 2024!

After a restful winter break, our team is back and busy! To start the quarter off strong, our new members were given a tour of our off-campus location at Inventopia, led by our aerodynamic manufacturing and composites lead, Brandon. Inventopia is a UC Davis venture program which provides tech resources to startups at a more accessible price point. We’ve also recently taken our first team pictures with our 2024 team, as seen above. New polo shirts are pending, we can't wait to show them off in future photos!

Our chassis team, a branch of our structures team, has been hard at work since the beginning of winter break. They have finished welding the bulkheads, which serve as mental partitions within the car. Also, the chassis team is more than half way done with manufacturing after finishing the jig, the structure that holds all the tubes in place for welding. Currently, they are fitting and welding the chassis suspension boxes which is one of the most important sections of the chassis. Special thank you to our sponsor, Applied Lasers, who cut and prepped the tubes for our team and Upstream Engineering for CNC bending our chassis hoops!

Composites, another branch of structures, has recently received carbon fiber materials from Rocket Composites. Thank you to our sponsor for providing the dry carbon and epoxy resin! This will be used for the front panel and nose cone later in the build.

Moving on to powertrain news, our drivetrain subteam has finished manufacturing the sprocket using a 3-axis CNC machine. They even took the time to engrave “UC Davis FSAE” as an easter egg for other team members. The sprocket is used to transmit power between gear shifts, and we cannot wait to see it all come together as we assemble FE11.

Our accumulator branch, also part of powertrain, are responsible for packaging the low voltage systems of our vehicle and they recently finished a 3D-printed prototype for the dashboard and telemetry board and are continuing to prototype other electrical enclosures. On the other hand, our electrical team was also kept busy this month with the Formula team from Sacramento State University arriving at Davis to exchange information about electrical systems.

Here in operations, we’re continuing to find sponsors, design promotional materials, and organize team events. A crowdfunding campaign will start this February to ensure that our team members will be able to make it to Michigan for the competition in June. You can find the link to donate down below.

Also, make sure to check out our Give Day video! You’ll get a sneak peek of our student work center at the ESDC!

For more information on Give Day:

Give Day 2024

If you’re looking for more updates on FRUCD, check out our other social media through our Linktree. We hope your month was as productive as ours!