Jacob Baran

Oliver Cai
Jeffrey Fu
Alex Oda

Steam Car Project – Group 3 – Status Report

8/30/10 – Building phase

Over the course of the weekend, Jacob and Alex put together short
PowerPoint’s which we compiled in class today as our project
proposal. Once our plan was evaluated by our Student Advisor, we
commenced building the car. We took a look through the tools
provided in the toolbox and began to work based on how we split up
the jobs in our proposal.
Jacob worked on cutting the templates to glue on the
aluminum sheet, while Alex pasted the body template on the largest
sheet of metal and cut out the main part that will shape the body. The
only issues they ran into were making sure that everything was cut
accurately in the right areas.
Jeff, the engine lead, and Oliver started to work on attaching the brass tubes to the boiler, or soda can.
We were able to make holes in the can just fine, but ran into a problem when trying to solder the tubes in place.
Solder would not stick to the surface of the can at all, so blobs of it would just accumulate and fall off. We
thought that we needed to create a cleaner metal surface by sanding it but we ran out of time by then to be able
to test that out. We figured the solder joint must be critical since it must be an air tight seal for the pressurized
steam to be able to exit the tubes.

9/8/10 – Building phase (cont.)

Since we had missed our opportunity to work on the car since Monday was Labor Day, we decided to meet at
6pm on Wednesday. Jacob finished cutting and bending the blades for the pinwheel that the steam blows
against. Alex finished putting together most of the chassis. Jeff and Oliver worked on soldering the tubes to the
can, this time making sure to solder all of the surfaces where the solder will stick on. This finally worked and
we ended up with a clean and hopefully air-tight joint. Oliver then put together the wicks that will be used to
heat up the can. We were able to get a lot accomplished in one evening so this left sufficient time for us to test
the car and make modifications.

9/13/10 – Building phase (cont.)

We were pretty close to finishing the car at this point since all we had left were mounting the wheels, attaching
the rubber band belts, and fitting the wicks under the can. Jacob suggested soldering the spokes of the wheel to
the wheel itself so that it would make a nice permanent bond, which turned out to work pretty nicely. We also
decided to remove the wires that were wrapped around the chassis and instead solder the aluminum sheets
together for a cleaner solution. We attached the wheels onto the body and fit the can engine in the center and did
a test push to make sure the car rolled smoothly. What we have left is figuring out how to get the steam car
moving by steam power.