8/10/2025 - 10/5/2025: A New Year / Frame Sendout and Design Updates / Guest Lecturer / Accumulator Lead Highlight!
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Anton Walvoord
Oct 5, 2025, 5:21:38 PM10/5/25
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Northwestern Formula Racing
@nufsae | northwesternformularacing.com
Fall Newsletter - 10.5.2025
A New Year:
Hello again Formula fans! Now that we're a couple weeks into school, I'm checking back in with an update on what we've been up to. Expect more updates now that we're back on campus!
The class of 2029 is officially on campus, and our team has been hard at work recruiting new members these first few weeks. We're so excited to begin working with a new group of engineers and car-lovers.
Hello again Formula fans! Now that we're a couple weeks into school, I'm checking back in with an update on what we've been up to. Expect more updates now that we're back on campus!
The class of 2029 is officially on campus, and our team has been hard at work recruiting new members these first few weeks. We're so excited to begin working with a new group of engineers and car-lovers.
NFR26 New Member Orientation
Last year we introduced an overhauled electrical education program, covering the basics of electronics and software over the course of several weeks. We saw a lot of success, ensuring that all of our members had a shared knowledge base to build off of. This year we have further refined this program based on member feedback, and we're expanding our mechanical education to match.
Our new members have the opportunity to go through 3 separate courses dedicated to learning CAD, FEA, CFD and other skills as they relate to the lathe, mill, and composites manufacturing. They will learn and execute the entire lifetime of a part, creating the initial CAD, analyzing it and iterating, and finally manufacturing and evaluating the end product.
NFR26 Electrical Education Meet and Greet
Electrical education will involve learning about circuits and common implementations. Members will design a custom PCB and have the opportunity to solder their own board and learn how to write and upload software to it. Education also serves as a chance for new students to adjust to life at Northwestern, so we have created a new mentorship program to pair up new and old members to ease that transition.
Our designs have had major progress since the last newsletter. Since then, we've had design reviews for our frame, rear inverter, z-bar, Accumulator packboard, hubs and uprights, VCU, and BMS mainboard.
In particular I'd like to highlight our frame. Last week we had a final frame review session. We had planned to send the files out for manufacturing the following Wednesday, allowing time to correct any issues we found. Over the course of the review, we only found a few extremely minor issues that we were able to resolve on the spot. Because of this, we were able to move our sendout timeline up an entire week, pending some minor unrelated tab changes.
NFR26 frame color coded by tube thickness
We are also happy to announce that we are working with Bystronic to have our entire frame sponsored! This is a major source of support and we are very grateful for their assistance.
Guest Lecturer Dr. Jay Zhou:
Last week our team had the pleasure of welcoming guest lecturer [SAE Fellow Dr. Jay Zhou] to discuss the topic of EV Reliability. We learned about the current state of the EV market and the surprising differences in reliability between EV's, IC's, and Hybrids.
Dr. Zhou has over 28 years of experience with Ford Motor Company, including holding a position as Vice President of Ford Asia Pacific/China Quality and New Model Programs.
We are also happy to announce that we are working with Bystronic to have our entire frame sponsored! This is a major source of support and we are very grateful for their assistance.
Last week our team had the pleasure of welcoming guest lecturer [SAE Fellow Dr. Jay Zhou] to discuss the topic of EV Reliability. We learned about the current state of the EV market and the surprising differences in reliability between EV's, IC's, and Hybrids.
Dr. Zhou has over 28 years of experience with Ford Motor Company, including holding a position as Vice President of Ford Asia Pacific/China Quality and New Model Programs.
Our first mechanical lead highlight - Accumulator lead Lance Locker!
Lance is a junior from the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois studying Manufacturing and Design Engineering. He started by building a jigging system on the Chassis subteam his freshman year, and moved to designing and manufacturing the rockers for the Suspension subteam his sophomore year. Fun fact! Lance started as a journalism major before being convinced to switch to engineering.
We're so excited to see our Accumulator coming together under Lance's direction!
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