Longhorn Racing 2026 Manufacturing Season

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During my first year on Longhorn Racing’s manufacturing team, I got the chance to work on a wide range of machined components for the car. Most of my time was spent on the front suspension assembly, where I programmed and machined parts like the front uprights, preload nuts, suspension pickups, steering link tabs, and all four center lock wheel nuts. I also worked on titanium exhaust port adapters and helped out with a variety of smaller parts across the car. I personally programmed and machined over 10 unique parts for the car this year, totaling more than 40 actual components!

Beyond just making parts, I spent a lot of time working with different subsystems to improve manufacturability (DFM). This meant helping redesign parts to be easier and more reliable to machine, and sharing those lessons so future teams can build on them. I also helped dial in our fixturing and work holding, especially with soft jaws and fixture plates, which made setups more consistent and repeatable.

This year was a really strong one for manufacturing. I reached out to my previous internship, Method MFG, to help us out with additional machine support and tooling. Through that collaboration, we also worked together to film a promotional video for Datron USA, featuring parts being machined on one of their Datron neo machines. On the team side, I worked on improving our workflow by building out tool libraries and helping standardize our tooling. With support from Bass Tool, we put together a consistent set of tools for both aluminum and steel. I built out a standardized tool library in Fusion 360 and spent time dialing in feeds and speeds for each tool. This gave the team a reliable starting point for programming and helped standardize machining practices, which made a big difference in both speed and consistency, something that was missing when I first joined.

I also focused on increasing throughput by introducing practices like tabbing and using slitting saws, which helped reduce the number of setups required for many parts. Alongside that, I helped standardize machine setup processes and push the team toward thinking bigger about what we can realistically manufacture in-house. Because of these improvements, we saw a noticeable drop in scrap and were able to manufacture over 90% of machined components in-house. From what I know, that’s something the team hasn’t achieved before, which made it especially rewarding to be part of.

Looking ahead, I have a lot of ideas for next year based on what we learned this season. I’m planning to continue building out sponsorships, maintaining and expanding our tool libraries, and further improving our fixturing and work holding strategies. I also want to better define timelines and strengthen our internal quality practices, especially by improving our metrology capabilities and overall inspection process.