10/20/25 - 10/26/25: Catalyzer Update! / Boards Purchased / SpaceX & Tesla Visitors / Suspension Lead Highlight
Anton Walvoord
Catalyzer Update!
Hello Formula! With the help of your generosity we have reached our initial fundraising goal! We've currently raised $5,710 and have only 5 days remaining in our campaign! Our page will be closing this Friday and we have boosted our goal to $10,000 in order to further support our competitive and technical goals. If you haven't yet, please help support our team by visiting [giving.nu/NFR26] and by spreading the word that our campaign is nearing its end! Every little bit makes a difference toward getting our car driving the best we can build it.
Once again, we are designing for major design changes that will push our team forward but are also very costly. Our biggest change is moving to an all-wheel drive design using hub motors in our front two wheels. All of our motors will be driven by our custom motor controllers we design and build in house. We are extremely excited about these designs and we need your help to purchase our components and manufacture them! Thank you for any support you are able to provide!
First Board Sendout:
This past week we finalized and purchased our designs for 11 different boards throughout the car. On the Data Acquisition subteam we sent out our Dashboard Driver and our Telemetry Remote and Base Station boards. For Low Voltage Electronics we purchased our Vehicle Control Unit. Our High Voltage Electronics team ordered the Discharge Board, Pack Monitor Board, BMS Mainboard, Rear Inverter Drive and Controller boards, and our Accumulator Sense PCB's. Finally, for all electrical subteams we purchased custom flexible STM programmer circuits.
NFR26 Sense PCB to connect BMS to Accumulator Segments
We also put out all of the component orders for our board BOM's, so we can begin manufacturing as soon as the printed circuits arrive. We are extremely excited, as these purchases mark the beginning of our path manufacturing and debugging our boards this year. We have many returning members who will be using the lessons they learned last year preparing for competition in order to support our newer members during debugging and testing.
NFR26 Pack Monitor Board
There are only a few drive critical boards remaining to have V1's sent out, and we are rapidly coming up on their deadlines. Soon we will have purchased all of our boards necessary for a version 1 of our car!
SpaceX & Tesla Visitors:
Evan McConnell presenting to NFR
We had a number of visitors from industry this past week. On Wednesday we had Northwestern Alum Evan McConnell present at the beginning of our general meeting about his time at SpaceX, running an extensive Q&A session with our members afterwards. Members got to learn about what it means to be a SpaceX employee, and learn about potential opportunities for their careers! We are very grateful to Evan for coming out to speak to our team and giving us insight into how SpaceX runs.
NFR26 Students During SpaceX Presentation
This past Friday we also had the opportunity to have a long conversation with several visiting Tesla employees. We brought out last year's car and talked with them about what we view as our strong points and what we can do better this coming year. Specifically, we talked at length about our thermal simulations and how we can improve our cooling system. There was also a lot of discussion of how important sensors and data are to improving our vehicle year over year. Members also had the opportunity to talk with Tesla about internship opportunities and their interest in the company!
Suspension Lead Highlight:
Our final mechanical lead highlight for the year – Ben Smith!
Ben is a sophomore from Sparks, Maryland studying Mechanical Engineering. He joined Formula's suspension team his freshman year, where he worked on steering and anti roll bars. This year, he'll be leading the suspension team. Outside of Formula, Ben enjoys hiking, going on drives, and playing piano.
Ben has been pushing his team, and we've been very impressed by the work they've been producing. Many of his projects are moving into the manufacturing stage and we're incredibly excited to see how they turn out!