By: Harris Mandell (Mechanical Engineering, ’21)
Some major changes to the Baja shop space have occurred over the past couple of months. This past August, a portion of the space in the Taylor Hall Instrument Machine Shop was restructured to accommodate more space for not only the Baja shop, but for a new welding cell, designed to benefit students and faculty all throughout the Hajim school. The welding cell contains an all new Siegmund welding table and fixturing kit. The team has been quick to take advantage of this new tool over the past couple of weeks during the frame fabrication process. The fixturing kit allows us to accurately align our frame tubes such that our finished frame will be dimensionally accurate to the model in CAD.
The additional floor space in the Baja shop has also helped immensely for shop organization and for adding new pieces of equipment. John Miller, director of the Instrument Machine Shop, has been an integral part of this endeavor. With his help, we were able to sell some of our older pieces of machinery, replace them with some newer pieces, such as a Series I Bridgeport Mill and a horizontal band saw, and have the electrical wiring completed all before the start of the manufacturing season. The addition of these new machines and extra space has greatly increased our manufacturing capabilities and workflow in the shop. We’re very much looking forward to the rest of the season!
