The Chariot - Computer Controlled Machining

Last week, I failed to create my plane. My original idea for this week was to try to machine plane wings out of foam. But I ultimately realized this was a terrible idea as I had spent the previous week trying to learn aerodynamics so that I can create my own airfoil and this did not work out.

I thus decided to pivot to creating a large car that I could sit in. I wanted to make something large and impressive, so I decided to go all out this week. Here is Neil enjoying my creation - now lets get into how I made it. I spent 10h each day for 5 days making this happen. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun! I started by creating some inspiration photos in ChatGPT. I am not really an artist so this was a very helpful step for me to start to think about how I should shape the chariot. The car had to have relatively low dimensionality and so it took a bit of prompting to get GPT to show me something useful. I whipped something up in CAD so I could figure out what materials I should get. I then went to Home Depot where I bought 2 4'x8' pieces of plywood and one 12"x12' lumber bar. The lovely gentleman helped me cut it so I could fit it onto the machining table and into the Uber. After waiting for 2 Ubers to get one that could fit the would, I made it to EDS so I could begin my work. I made some funky splines to put into the wheels. These hole designs were made fully accidentally. I had some concerns about their strenght, which ended up being problematic, as you will see later. I then set out to make the seat, using this video as inspiration. There are a bunch of rectangle cutouts that allow the center piece to bend properly. It bends exactly how much is needed! Now it is time to decide the side panel. I tried a medley of other ideas after my original one. After like 10h on this, I couldn't find anything better so I went with my original idea. I also cut out the side frames that will be used to glue and hold the seat. I then glue the flexure to the frames with some clamps. Thank you very much for the idea Alec - it turned out very great. I then cut the supports out of lumber for the frame. I attempted to make this car motorized with a gear and chain. I ended up not gluing the supports wide enough apart to fit the motor, so this was scrapped :(. After this I prepared the axle mounts. The print ran out of filament so the colors are different. I cut the axle to the correct length with the bandsaw. I then glued the whole thing together! While inserting the axle into the wheel, the wheel snapped because the drill bit we used was exactly the size of the axle. There was no wiggle room. I had to glue the wheel back together. This was super frustrating because this happened like 15 minutes before class was supposed to start. The final product. Woot woot! You can see the gear chain and sprocket for the motor setup. Moving the car to Media Lab for presentation. Neil enjoying the car. Now, the Chariot sits in our fraternity chapter room as a treasure. I sit in it each Sunday that we have chapter!