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Project Overview
As part of the Baja SAE team, I worked on the design and integration of the vehicle’s powertrain system under demanding off-road conditions. My responsibilities included drivetrain layout, shaft geometry, and the design of torque-transmitting couplings within tight packaging and alignment constraints.
In addition to design work, I supported manufacturing across multiple components using manual mills, lathes, and CNC machining, translating CAD geometry into physical parts under real fabrication constraints.
Skills Strengthened
Mechanical coupling design for torque transmission
Tolerance stack-up and alignment analysis
Lathe, mill, and CNC machining
Design-for-manufacturability under time constraints
Interface control and revision management
System-level drivetrain integration
Outcome
Designing couplings made it clear how sensitive rotating systems are to alignment, tolerance stack-up, and revision control. These components served as critical interfaces between shafts, bearings, and drivetrain elements, and even small dimensional changes had cascading effects across the system.
One of the most important lessons from this project was the role of communication between design and manufacturing. In several cases, late-stage shaft updates were not clearly communicated before couplers were fabricated, resulting in mismatched components during assembly. The rework that followed reinforced that parts cannot be treated as isolated pieces. Each component is tightly coupled to others, and small changes propagate quickly.
Participating directly in machining strengthened this understanding. Manufacturing parts myself exposed the realities of tool access, setup constraints, and tolerance control that are easy to overlook in CAD. Seeing how design intent translates into physical components changed how I approach interface design and revision management.
This project reshaped how I think about engineering work. Documentation, version control, and cross-functional coordination are not secondary tasks. They are essential to ensuring that complex mechanical systems come together correctly the first time.
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