I'm trying to sort out at what point in the operation to make it easy to assemble.
Still talking about the tub here, trying to maintain the optimum geometry and have as many people able to build/own the chassis as possible makes for an interesting thought exercise.
The trade-offs are a balance between skill of the builder, the tools he has available and the time you want to spend.
I know I can design the chassis to the optimum geometry, such that it could be built from scratch by a relatively unskilled person with not all that much tooling, but it would take any average joe, me included, a year to put together, it would require many many steps and be not quite as nice as if we could just hand the work over to someone already tooled up.
Next best option is to simplify the geometry, this would allow us to make the parts higher quality for a given amount of labour, but the issue then becomes a matter of stress at 90degree joints, a little excess weight, and the simpler chunkier geometry will under most uses of the car mean the aero contribution from the tub will be more an obstacle. I'd much rather build it so that the tub can stand on its own with the rest of the chassis and any really cool ideas you aero guys can think of will be open. Perhaps there's room there i don't yet see. And some options to work my head around to optimize the loadpaths and stuff that work out in our favour at this level of work in wood.
Next option is simplified geometry in carbon, this is nice, same problems as above but you do get to brag you've got a carbon tub, and it has the potential to be lighter. The cost at this level is probably comprable to the optimum-geometry moderate-work wood option, which again is nice. The other issue is that including carbon in the build does pose the question of curing.
Next question, which works into repeatability and therefore inter-compatability of subframes, pedalboxes, and sundry other solutions across the project; is whether it would make more sense to have the tub easy to assemble yourself, or build yourself.
The process for the carbon one would look like this:
http://autospeed.com/cms/title_Building ... tml(scroll down to Making the Tub) and like this:
http://dpcars.net/dp1v8/da.htm
beyond that we get into mold making.
here's some food for thought:
Saleen S7 tub
The basic problem is compound curves, they're hard to execute well, but more than that, they're difficult to cut to. But obviously i want to be able to include compound curves, we'll get a stronger lighter structure out the other end.
So i'm going to hammer it around a bit more and when i've got the cad together i'll show you what i mean.
