Buggy is a 100 year old tradition at CMU. I belong to one of the teams that designs and builds a new buggy every year, Fringe.
4 of Fringe’s Buggies
Buggy is a unique sport, where a student-built 3 wheeled vehicle navigates around a 0.8 mile long course in just 2-3 minutes. Inside each buggy is a short student, typically 5’2” or under who is responsible for steering and braking around the course. 5 pushers push the buggy on the uphill sections, which are divided into the Front Hills and Back Hills, separated by the Free Roll — a section of the course where the driver is completely on their own can reach speeds close to 40mph.
Our head driver in our 2020 build — Baltic
I have been the Head Mechanic for Fringe for the 2021 and 2022 season. My responsibilities include maintenance and repairs for our old buggies, design and construction of a new buggy for each Raceday, and teaching and managing younger mechanics during build sessions and at weekend practices. We were unable to build a new buggy for 2021, but I led the design for Burnout, our new buggy that debuted at Raceday 2022. This buggy won 3rd place in the Design Competition and 3rd in the Women’s Races.
The Buggy Course
Bodyworking one of our buggies
While the actual designs for each team’s buggies remains a secret, my design priorities focused on making the pushbar more rigid, to ensure the best transfer of energy, improving the safety of our buggies, and streamlining the manufacturing process.
As the head mechanic, I have needed to have a good technical understanding of all the systems on our buggies as well as the construction process in order to effectively teach other mechanics. I was able to gain experience using a more complex set of features in Solidworks and rebuilt the CAD from the ground up to make it easier for future mechanics to design new buggies. I also put in a significant amount of work into filling gaps in the documentation of the design and manufacturing process, especially coming up with a full BOM. I was also able to gain experience with making drawings and getting quotes from manufacturers for some of our machined parts.
In addition to my technical skills, I have also learned a lot in terms of leadership skills, in being able to manage a year-long engineering project and motivating students to wake up at 4AM on the weekends for our practices.