Saturday, March 23, 2013

Shell Progress

The shell is being made!  We're using a custom built thermoformer (our teammate Frank spent a lot of time getting it to work right, which we all appreciate).

Basically, we created foam molds of all the pieces of the shell (it's split into 10 pieces).  The thermoformer heats a sheet of plastic up really hot (about 300 degrees Fahrenheit), and then this plastic is dropped over the mold and sucked down with a vacuum.

The video makes it pretty clear how it works, so check it out:




















And here's our car with many of the new shell pieces attached.

The car will be shipped Houston this Friday, so we're doing everything we can to make sure it's ready.