Finally I can tell the reason I have been so busy and unable to write anything for a while. I was building a Soapbox Racer for Rovio with Angry Birds theme to be raced at Red Bull Soapbox GP at Helsinki on Saturday 19.8.2017.

Rovio asked our professor at Aalto Design Factory if they could build them a car for the race and the professor past the question to the students of our Guild. I was the unlucky one to answer that email and became the Contact person between Rovio and our building team. I were also organizing the building schedule and went to shop all the materials together with Rovio representative.

The first materials was acquired in the end of June and we began building in July when Rovio got their final design ready. They held a competition for the fans to draw cars where Rovio together with us chose the nicest car to be built. We started building right away by welding the frame together and started working on the front suspension.

Some time later we had a frame with wheels and a vision how to build the steering. We also got a CNC-machined pieces to attach the front wheels and take care of our steering. Pretty simple aluminium blocks which we drew quickly in Onshape and gave the 3D-model to Design Factory which then milled the blocks. Worked out quite nicely until we began drilling wrong size holes and broke a thread tap into one of the holes. But in the end they worked.

We used a huge piece of steel to mount the brake discs. Only problem was how to mount these blocks to the wheels, but we handled that. Problem later on was a bit wobbly wheels.

Later on we also got Red to see how our building was going on since he was going to be riding the car down in the race. I also gave an interview to Red Bull and I’m still waiting to see how that video came up. Hopefully they’ll post it soon, since there were 65 teams in the race.

A lot of work was done during the last night before we needed to take the car to the racing site. We got a pleasant surprise during the building when we got some leftovers from an event that was held at the Design Factory. Sous Vide flank steak was pretty delicious.

The final masterpiece of the car was the slingshot which I built almost completely in the last week before the race on Wednesday. I spent few hours in the woodshop at Design Factory and shaped the birch I had into the slingshot on the car. On Thursday I was first time doing vinyl tapes, but those came up pretty nicely too. Even when we had some pretty hard shapes like the register plate. Finally on Thursday-Friday night at 1 am the car was finally ready. It was a long night and we worked from 6 pm Thursday until the 1 am in Friday to get the car ready. Car was first presented quickly in TV on a morning program Friday morning and on Saturday it was time to race it. Rovio also did filming of the progress and here is a link to the first video they published. Second one is coming soon hopefully.

That’s all for this time. Next time I’ll write a little about the race itself and post the pictures I took. I also hope to get a video of my own about the building and the race ready by that. Hopefully sometimes during next week.

Thanks for reading this post if you got at the end. Remember to comment, check the youtube channel occasionally and please share this to your friends.

Pete

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