OW-PORTFOLIO / S-02 TROLLEY ofw25@bath.ac.uk
SHORT WORK / S-02

Charging trolley, design-to-stock build

Team Bath Racing Electric

The new accumulator design meant a new trolley, designed from scratch to meet the rules, in the week before our first competition. I was given the overall frame and told to finish the mechanical design, which in practice meant everything between a frame and a working, legal trolley: the liquid cooling loop, the accumulator mounting points, the compartmentalisation the rules demand so that nothing high-voltage can be reached, the shield between the user and the accumulator, the panels and plates, and the drawers, cannibalised from an old tool chest. None of it was drawn in CAD. It was designed at the bench, from what the lab held, against a deadline that did not move. That is the judgement this build practised: where drawing effort adds value when you cannot order parts.

MEDIA
The trolley at scrutineering with the accumulator sealed under its cover on the worktop, polaroids of the team along the front edge
Fig. 1 At scrutineering, accumulator on the worktop under its shield.  Photo: Ernst
The trolley in the team pit box beside the car, accumulator on the worktop behind the shield, high-voltage warning label on the panel
Fig. 2 In the pit box, alongside the car it charges.
The finished trolley: extrusion frame, tool drawers under a timber worktop, control panel and emergency stop on the near face, pneumatic wheels
Fig. 3 Control panel and emergency stop on the near face, tool drawers under the worktop.

The competition rules require a printed sheet of emergency contact details taped to the trolley. It carries three people's names and phone numbers, so it is masked in every frame here that shows it.

Inside the trolley: the charger, the radiator and coolant lines of the cooling loop, high-voltage cabling in spiral wrap, and the extrusion base frame
Fig. 4 Inside: the charger, the radiator and its cooling loop, the cable routing, and the extrusion frame the rest was built onto.