Greetings, Tankers!

What follows is a lengthy update, I don’t mean to hit you with a wall of text but we keep moving forward so quickly sometimes it’s hard to keep you all updated!

To start off, the team has partitioned the exterior parts of the tank into individual projects, Steve is driving the running gear (tracks, wheels, springs and cogs). Nate has taken control of the final drive and control linkages. Tristan heads up the turret, and Beckett embodies the chassis and armor plates. Hopefully at the end of this semester, each engineer will have completed his task and we’ll be 80% through designing the [exterior of the] tank!

We’ve also been talking to a number of salesmen and businessmen about how to present the project and plan a fundraising campaign. Next week Tristan is setting up a sit down with a career salesman to gain some insight on how the marketing world works. We are engineering majors, not marketers, so we’ll need all the advice we can get on that front.

We found a man willing to paint, once we get to that point. He is willing to at least let us use his equipment and he is also willing, pending an open schedule, to help us do the work. This is a wonderful development!

Additionally, thanks to a very generous contact, we now have users manuals of the Jagdpanzer38(t) and the Panzer38(t), in addition to several useful pdf’s on the chassis. They’re all in German, so add translation to our extensive list of tasks. I’d like to add his name to this write-up but haven’t gotten his go-ahead on that so I’ll just give a shout-out, he knows who he is.

Lastly, we have new personalized emails! A minor detail but if we all have our own business cards (ooooh hint hint maybe soon?) then it’s nice to have personalized emails. Nate and Beckett’s emails still need some fenangling but Steve and Tristan’s are working fine. Look on the Contact page for those.

So for the next week we’ll be working diligently on our respective projects. As I write this, Nate is figuring out his Final Drive right-angle drive, doing the math that’s required for bevel and miter gears. Beckett’s working on an accurate side profile for the armor substructure, and Steve is killing his homework so he can spend the rest of the week on the chassis.

We should have some screenshots of our work for you next time, stay tuned!

-T.ankmann