Formula Group T is a project run by Belgian masterstudents engineering from GROUP T who design and build a small electric vehicle (Areion) and compete with other universities worldwide in the Formula Student competitions during the summer of 2012.
Battery Management System
Published on May 16th, 12:04 by admin
Past week we began working with the BMS and by now it is already connected and working.
We use the design of Elithion for monitoring our battery. The system was provided by Centric. We would like to thank Georg Steinfeller for his effort getting the BMS in time.
By now the BMS is ready to be integrated in the controlling loop.
Later this day we will do some testing with discharging the whole battery pack and later do some communicating with the charger.
On the picture you can see one stack with the BMS boards attached to it.
Fabrication of the differential arms
Published on May 10th, 22:28 by admin
To connect the differential to the frame, a custom-made system is designed. With two arms made out of aluminum, the chainforces will be countered. For this one of the arms (the one at the side of the chain) is much bigger than the other. The biggest bearing in the car (diameter 100mm) is placed in the big hole so the differential can operate smoothly. With fitting bolts this system is fastened to the frame. Furthermore, it will be possible to adjust the position of these arms so that the chain can stay under perfect tension.
The pieces were made out of an aluminum plate, that had to be milled to the correct thickness....
Soldering the PCB's at Eurocircuits
Published on May 7th, 23:28 by admin
When all the PCB’s arrived, Wouter and Yongjiang went to Eurocircuits to solder the components onto the PCB’s, which also were produced by Eurocircuits. By using their eC-stencil-mate, they were able to put the solder paste onto the smd pads with high precision. After they put the components onto these pads, they used the eC-reflow-mate to bake the PCB’s. Wouter & Yongjiang spent the whole day to solder all our PCB’s for Areion. These PCB's will be used for various electrical components like can modules, braking light, data-acquisition, etc. An impression of their day can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxDpfohFN-s
Production of the steering house
Published on May 1st, 20:04 by admin
The steering house is made out of aluminium 7075. It was custom designed by a member of the team. The part was specially developed to use in our car. This way, a light weight part could be obtained. The steering housing was milled on a CNC milling machine by our new partner, Van Casteren Metaalwerken.
Parts from Rogers arrived
Published on Apr 24th, 19:07 by admin
Today we received the last parts from Rogers Corporation. Together with Rogers, a lot of components for the battery box and the busbar for the Δ - Y circuit have been produced. Some parts of the battery box include the connection plates to make the series connection of the cells and the maintenance plugs. These plugs are used to disconnect the modules from each other when maintenance needs to be done. With these parts a high durability is reassured which results in less problems for the car.
