I recently supported Max Hart’s racing team by providing expert engineering assistance at the Monza race circuit in Milan and again at Oulton Park, demonstrating our hands-on experience and commitment to high-performance motorsport engineering through our TCR Garage Work services.

At the age of 17, I was very fortunate to be able to go to MIT in Boston and attend a course on robotics and robotic design.

In this course, we were tasked to design, program, and produce a custom "battle-bot" from scratch for a battle championship at the end of the two weeks. Rather than building the bot using the given examples, which most teams did, we designed an original rear-wheel-drive bot with a very high torque lifting mechanism to flip rival battle-bots over, leading to an instant win.

Key Technical Points For Our Design:
1. Control System:
Written movement code using C# to send from controller to bot computer, driving motors.
2. Weapon Mechanism:
Dual-motor driving a 64:1 compound gears connected to a lifting rod, to flip over any weight rival bot (required counter-weight at rear which also acted as a stop to not flip ourselves over).
3. Drivetrain:
Rear-wheel-drive using high grip wheels and own weight movement after lifting rival bot, then we used omni-directional wheels at front for turning our bot.

Engineering Iterations
1. Mechanism Iteration (Not enough torque):
Issue:
Our first design used two motors driving two individual 16:1 compound gears with a long and heavy lifting plate which lifted quickly, but couldn't lift a full sized battle-bot.
Solution:
We redesigned the gearbox to have the two motors driving the same 8 tooth gear with a much higher compound ratio and with a sturdier, shorter, and lighter lifting tool, giving our bot a much higher torque output.
Trade-off:
Our main trade-offs, however, were a much shorter reach on other bots, letting them attack ours easier, and a far slower lifter movement speed.

2. Centre of Mass and Bot Stability
Issue:
During testing, the low weight of our battle-bot and the high lifting torque caused our own robot to pitch forward, and flipping over its front axle when lifting rival robots. With heavier robots, our bot would be the one to flip over before our rival would, lifting us off our own driving wheels, unable to reverse.
Solution:
We engineered a heavy ballast at the rear to solve multiple problems.
1. Moving the centre of ballance more to the rear for stability when moving.
2. Creating a physical backstop in case we wanted to lift ourselves up to block attacks by lowering the lifter without flipping ourselves backwards.
3. Adding additional weight onto the rear wheels so we could create increased grip on our rear wheels, allowing us to now move while holding an opponent mid-air and dropping them outside the arena, which counted as an instant elimination for the rival.

Conclusion:
In this project, I learned about the importance of iterative testing and design, and how I need to make deliberate trade-offs, and how to work effectively in a team and to work under time-constraint.
I also learned how to create and make use of torque using compound gears, and when torque over speed is necessary.
The most important skill I learned, however, is the importance of proper code, as I understand that modern mechanical engineering requires electronics and is more equivelent to mechatronics, leading me to self study many coding languages such as C++, C, Java, and Python.

At the end of my first year of university, I was assigned into a group and was tasked to create a squash ball launcher from scratch using the skills we were taught throughout our second semester.
We were tasked with having it fired remotely, and with a manufacturing limitation of a £50 budget.
I chose the role of 3D modelling and prototyping. After many design itterations, I landed on the propultion mechanism of 2 flywheels.
For the full design, I created a housing for two 15V motors with a 3% compression of the size of the squash ball, and a trapezium shaped attachment point for adding the base and ball slide.
Then I created the base in tandem with a "foot" to change angle of fire for range.
Lastly, I designed a tube slide for the ball to roll down with speed into the flywheels, else it would stall the motors. I modelled a cutout at the top of the tube to fit a servo with an arm to hold the ball at the closed position, where pushing a connected button would operate the servo and move the arm, dropping the ball down the tube.
All these electrical components were connected to an Arduino and also coded by me.

This project was something I've been wanting to do for a while since I was about 15, so during my summer break, I thought with my year's at university studying mechanical engineering, I could use my time to understand engines and fuel systems, and mechanical conponents used in all sorts of different transportations.

This was a 100cc 2 stroke single cyliner petrol engine kit to fit on any bycicle universally, which I found meant any bike with a large enough space to fit an engine in the frame. I learned a lot from this project, mainly about proper engine alignment, and proper chain length, as a too tight of a chain twisted the rear wheel one direction or the other. Very interestingly, the starter motor to turn the engine on was very simple, and only used my initial force pedalling and dropping the clutch, which generated enough charge to ignite the spark plug and engage the engine.
Despite the looks and it being an old bycicle I found in my shed, I tuned it and cut many different small peices of metal and foam, bent the frame, and swapped nuts for larger nuts to bulletproof the motorbike so there would be no metal-on-metal contact.
I also learned of the role of the carburator, the air-choke and air filter, proper throttle ajustment and proper idling speed adjustment, and very importantly, fuel to oil mixture (especially on first start, which I mixed 32:1 ration for the break-in period), and also taught me the fuel system and connected filter.

In the end, this motorbike was a very interesting project, and taught me about engine and all the required components for an engine to actually start, and continue running, even when not engaging the throttle.