Nolan Westrope is a mechanical engineering major at the University of Texas at Dallas. He’s a junior and the manufacturing lead at Dallas Formula Racing. With his limited free time, he enjoys rock climbing, playing video games, and exploring Dallas
When asked what got him into engineering, he says it stemmed from building cars as a child. At 14 years old, he bought a 1978 Chevy C10 pickup and spent 3 years fixing it. Since then, he’s enjoyed building things and continued exploring his passion. Throughout high school, he learned how to weld, and became a certified tig welder.
Nolan has been working hard all summer and through the start of the fall on a variety of projects, including our helping build our aero package, and working on our control arms and uprights. As manufacturing lead, he is in charge of building a large majority of the car. He and his manufacturing team use a wide variety of special equipment such as waterjets, mills, lathes and more.
“Over the summer, we spent a lot of time doing the machining for the uprights. We used to outsource the uprights in previous years, so it was a really big jump and a pretty huge learning curve.
We discovered a ton of problems as we went, and it led to a bunch of complications… but we came out okay and we learned a lot in the end!”
What’s the coolest machine you work on?
“Definitely the waterjet,” Nolan says.
A waterjet is a machine that can pierce through various materials such as carbon fiber, metals, and plastics with a stream of water. This stream of water is routed from the tap, through a high pressured system, which allowed the water to be forced out through a nozzle at a diameter of a small wire at 80,000 PSI. This large & powerful machine can span a 10′ x 10′ area, allowing us to create profiles larger than our vehicle. Nolan has been using the waterjet to help create aerofoils, ribs, swan necks, a lot of plates, and divinycell foam boards, among other things.
How are you training new members?
For manufacturing, Nolan focuses on safety as it is the most important thing. When dealing with these powerful and large machines, operating them safely is critical. After a little bit of experience in the machine shop, members will have the opportunity to learn to weld and use other machines such as mills, manual mills, CNC mills, and even lathes.
What advice do you have for new members?
When asked what advice he would have for new members, he says: be passionate and never stop bothering your leads. He loves that everyone on the team is passionate about what they do, and the most successful members bring that same passion to the table. From there, it’s all about bothering your leads. He points to himself, saying he has a lot on his plate and often misses messages. He encourages new members to keep reaching out to see what projects they can work on.
He mentions how rewarding it’s been for him to be able to train new members and is excited to take on more mentees this semester. He hopes to take on more of a guidance role and become a mentor to more engineers, teaching them how to weld and use other machines. For manufacturing specifically, working on the car and knowing that his subteam played an integral role in the team is extremely rewarding, and he is excited that his new members will be able to share this excitement with him.