With a subgroup goal of reusing last year's 18650 segments and the lower half of the accumulator, focus was turned to improving the High Voltage electronics enclosure. Accessibility, visibility, and water resistance were biggest pain points of the previous design. With the new design, both main pack disconnects are easily removable in under 3 minutes compared to ~14 minutes for the previous design. Each Low Voltage board and HV bus bars are easily removable for debugging or installation of a required energy meter at the FSAE competition. Visibility to the multiple status LEDs improved as well, with a 60° viewing angle for each LV board. Water ingress was mitigated through a softer closed cell foam, closed end rivnuts for each access panel, and appropriate bolt spacing to ensure adequate gasket compression. From a swap to aluminum busbars, reduced external HV cable, simplified wiring paths, and smaller contactors, the enclosure weight was reduced by ~3lbs.
Below are the internal project proposals for the previous and new design of the lid. Parts 1-4 are conducted in a team design review, while part 5 records failures of the design after implementation.