Students to compete in 2005 North American Solar Challenge in July

With help from ESPRIT 2005, computer aided manufacturing (CAM) software by DP Technology Corp., Stanford University engineering and science students will be cruising their way up the United States, from Austin, Texas to Alberta, Canada, taking solar power to new speeds this summer.

The Solar Car Project team was able to construct a more reliable and analytically advanced vehicle than in past years. DP, the team’s platinum sponsor, outfitted the university with ESPRIT software licenses in order to give them an edge on precision manufacturing.

“What we ended up doing was to use ESPRIT to program tool paths and examine how easy it was to manufacture particular components on our car,” said Brian Cheung, team member. “We optimized a lot of our design using ESPRIT. It is easy to design something that can’t be manufactured, but ESPRIT gave us a more practical view of our parts.”