Newsletter of December 2021

During our last week of 2021, we had to make the unfortunate decision not to go testing at Ten Kate. An issue which arose last-minute made it not worth-wile. We have already made progress in solving this issue, and feel confident that we will be able to test at the beginning of 2022! 

Techprof is a supplier specialized in the supply of technical components and tools. They help us by supplying us with bolts, nuts and a sorting cabinet to put them in.
 

 

Aeronamic is a company specialized in high speed, rotating components and precision parts. They develop, produce, assemble, test and even service them according to all standards. They support us financially.

Last month has been a challenging and eventful month. 

First, we gave our work floor a slight facelift. Now that we are working on both the DELTA XE and its predecessor APEX RS we needed room for both of them. An additional motor lift table was arranged and now we created a new layout in which we can work on both bikes comfortably at the same time.  

The next project Chassis finished this month was the Connection box. The connection box is a container in which the high voltage lines from the electromotor are connected to those leading from the Cascadia, the brain of the superbike, such that the electromotor is instructed what to do. Before, this was made out of plastic. Due to the continued confrontation with the interference within the DELTA XE it was figured that a connection box made of metal could reduce this through the principle of the Faraday cage. From the perspective of weight reduction aluminium was chosen. The limited space available lead to a complex design. The milling of this design proved to be challenging. Nonetheless, the University of Twente Hangar made it perfectly to our specifications. For more details, please refer to the technical Tuesday of 13 December. 

Additionally, the decision regarding the subframe had to be made. The current subframe cannot attached properly to the main frame due to bended mounting tabs. This occurred after welding the tabs that caused a misalignment with the holes in the subframe and those on the mounting tabs. Here the challenge was to either fabricate a new subframe on the old frame, of which no accurate model is in existence, to alter the holes in the mounting tabs. The latter solution was selected. Extrapolating the current misalignment to the new subframe proved to be a challenge with no guarantee of success. 

Another highlight of this month was the technical presentation where we were given the stage to show what we as Electric Superbike Twente 5.0 are hoping to achieve before the end of the summer. One of the points mentioned was racing. Since we have to traveling to circuits with our batteries and stored it safely, GelKoh provided us with a battery storage box. This battery box is very advanced which increases overall safety during storage, travelling but also when working on the battery.