Daniel Clare

Third-Year Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Student

Front suspension geometry

With 12 inches of travel and over 40 degrees of steering angle, I designed the double wishbone front suspension of the 2024 competition vehicle to balance performance over large obstacles with limit handling during the maneuverability event while minimizing weight and maximizing reliability.  To analyze the kinematics of different geometry designs, I used the 3d sketch tool in SOLIDWORKS, allowing me to simultaneously monitor all relevant metrics throughout travel, including caster angle, caster trail, camber angle, scrub radius, spindle length, roll center location, wheel recess, and more.  As compared to our 2023 car, I was able to increase wheel travel by 20%, decrease change in track width by 12%, and lower the roll center by an average of 3.5 inches, allowing the car to maintain more speed and control over obstacles.  Additionally, I was responsible for packaging the front outboard assembly, a very tightly-packed area of the car including components for the drivetrain, suspension, steering, brakes, and electronics systems.

Rear suspension geometry


As a way to reduce both the part count and mass of the system, the rear suspension was designed to use just one control arm, with the rear driveshafts helping to control the kinematics of the rear wheels.  When designing the rear suspension geometry, it was important to not only optimize for performance but to also optimize for component loading.  Because the driveshafts transmit suspension loads through to the gearbox housing, any reduction in these forces leads to a large decrease in rear drivetrain mass.  Additionally, to ensure the car exhibits limit-oversteer handling characteristics, the rear roll center needed to be raised from the previous year.  Using SOLIDWORKS, I was able to design a rear suspension geometry that not only reduced driveshaft loads from the previous year by 7%, but also increased wheel travel by 20%, decreased track width scrub by 14%, and raised the rear roll center by an average of 28% with respect to the ground.  However, the largest challenge of the rear suspension design was integration with other subsystems of the car.  Since the rear arm mounts straight onto the frame and because the rear driveshaft acts as a suspension member, both the rear frame, rear suspension, and rear drivetrain had to be designed with tight integration in mind.

SPring & damper tuning

During the summer of the 2023 competition season, I was tasked with fixing the ride height issues that had prevented the car from finishing a suspension event or endurance race without getting stuck.  By adding larger EVOL chambers to the dampers, I was able to raise the ride height of the vehicle, increasing ground clearance without increasing the spring rate at the wheels and allowing for a large amount of articulation over obstacles.  To allow me to tune the spring rates and ride heights for the new setup with the limited driving time available before competition, I created a MATLAB script that plotted the spring rate at the wheel for given air pressures in the main and EVOL chambers, combining the calculated air spring force with instantaneous motion ratios I determined using SOLIDWORKS Motion Analysis.  With the help of this data, we were able to condense what was normally 2 weeks of spring tuning into just half a day.  As a result of these suspension changes, not only was the car able to complete the suspension event for the first time since 2016, we received 1st place in the suspension event, 2nd place in the endurance race, and went on to receive first place overall for the Baja SAE Ohio competition.

Within the FOX Factory dampers used on the car, we are able to change the shim stacks that affect both compression and rebound damping in order to keep the entire control range of the semi-active valve usable.  I worked to tune both of these stacks by interpreting shock dyno data as well as analyzing qualitative data from testing to inform future iterations of the tune, allowing the car to maintain a higher speed over obstacles, keep the driver more comfortable, and reduce loading of components.

Manual & cnc machining experience

Throughout my time in both high school and college, I have gained experience in multiple machine shops operating a wide variety of machines, including a CNC mill, CNC lathe, CNC router, CNC waterjet, manual mill, manual lathe, surface grinder, wood lathe, drill press, table saw, TIG welder, MIG welder, and much more!  My machining experience using mills and lathes includes parts containing tolerances as strict as .0005" out of materials such as Steel (AISI 1020, 4130, 4140, and 4340), Stainless Steel (304), Aluminum (6061 and 7075), Brass (360 and Oilite), Acetal (Delrin), and Titanium (Ti-6Al-4V and Ti-6Al-6V-2Sn).

One project I am particularly proud of is fabricating an octahedron using exclusively a manual mill.  To allow the complex angles to be machined in a standard vice, I designed a 3D-printed fixture that held the piece in place during the final few operations.  Another project I'd like to highlight is the steering clevises that I manufactured for the 2024 Baja competition vehicle.  Due to the limited amount of CNC machines we had access to and the large amount of parts that required operations on those machines, I completed all of the operations that normally would be done by a CNC machine manually in order to reduce the backlog of CNC parts.  Machining these parts manually required using a four-jaw chuck, boring bar, and rotary table, with the parts requiring 6 manual machining operations to be completed.

FRC Team 334

Throughout my time in high school, I was a part of my school's FRC team, becoming captain my senior year.  This was a particularly challenging time to be captain as it closely followed the COVID shutdowns that had kept the team from meeting in-person for 2 years.  Since our team had just a few experienced members, I led the recruiting efforts for the team, managing a tryouts process that accepted 25 people out of approximately 140 applicants.  In the time before the season began, I helped to teach new members about the shop equipment as well as the design process and how to use CAD.  During the season, I managed the design and assembly of the robot, solved supply chain issues as they came up, and coordinated team funding, travel, and membership.

Contact ME!

Reach out via LinkedIn or through the contact information in my resume linked below.