# Tube Chassis Welders? **URL:** \ **Category:** PittSpeed Off Topic\ **Created:** [January 20, 2007, 10:45am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/tube-chassis-welders/187530 "2007-01-20T10:45:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 4
**Author:** ![Fiero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@Fiero](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Fiero)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2007, 7:19pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/tube-chassis-welders/187530/4 "2007-01-20T19:19:34Z")
> [@The last movie you've seen, and rate it.](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/the-last-movie-youve-seen-and-rate-it/27425/35): > > not knocking you, however–carneige mellon’s sae teams are light years ahead of other schools in terms of budget, donated items, etc. i know at upj, we had like a 3k budget and outdated shit to build an off road car. you guys get carbon fiber, chromoloy tubing, top of the line everything. > > our team was made up of all engineers, and me-- an eng. lit/history major w/ an sae membership card. I was the only one on the entire team who could weld, understood how to wire the damn thing, and got the donated parts (briggs engine, dana rearend.) > > w/ that said, why dont you guys atleast attempt to weld the damn thing. i know cmu has to have a tig welder and enough tubing to let you guys fuck up quite a few times. i know upj had welders, and they even had a dyno that i didnt know about until my last semester of college–or i would have found a way on it. > > thats what these things are for-- for the engineering students to actually “do” it before they make drawings of how it should be done. It’s easy to knock when looking at the situation from the outside. We’ve worked long and hard for everything we have. Personally, I’ve put thousands of hours into the organization (no joke) - and I can barely lay a tack. Why? Because we have to design and build the entire car from scratch - I don’t have time to also become a professional welder, I’m already trying becoming an engineer. Design-time alone takes about an entire semester - we CAD and iterate everything, stress analyze every component and do physical testing when possible - this takes a huge amount of time (I’m not even mention the organizational bullshit we go through daily). Plus we’re not born with this knowledge, everyone is learned this stuff as we go. The fact that we are able to get a car on the ground, from concept to conception, in about 6 months with a group of only 6-7 FULL-TIME, unpaid students at an extremely demanding university is nothing less than a miracle. That said we have had a few really decent welders come in and out of the organization, when we have, we’ve used them. In the past two-years though less experienced members have MIG’d our chassis, our welds look “ok” but we know a professional or more experienced TIG welder could do much better (we’d had problems we chassis cracking, hence our broad appeal to pittspeed). Our analysis said this shouldn’t be happening, so the problem is with us. We have a TIG, in fact, we have one in our shop – that doesn’t mean we have someone who’s capable of laying a good, strong bead In regards to funding, we’re always indebt. Aside from our garage space and electricity bill, the university doesn’t give us a single cent. Every dollar our team runs on is given by a sponsor we’ve had to secure and keep on the team. We know what it’s like to be a team running on a 3k budget; I’ve been around long enough to see it. Our budget is significantly larger now, but because put in the time to get it there. Every single one of us has a ridiculously precarious schedule; I rarely sleep more then 5 hours a night. Save the “you’re privileged, work harder” speech for someone else, we bust our balls. I mean seriously its like 10pm on a Saturday night and I’m on pittspeed. Damnnnnn I need a drink. PS: back to the point, any bad-ass welders out there? --- _[View the full topic](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/tube-chassis-welders/187530)._