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Racing Dutch Interview

3D printing has been a major revolution in product design, and over the next decade it is going to make an impact in many aspects of our ...


3D printing has been a major revolution in product design, and over the next decade it is going to make an impact in many aspects of our daily life. In our hobby we are already seeing the benefits of this with some small team creating some very interesting items to use at the track.

Racing Dutch are an exciting company that have taken many of the design processes and philosophies from Formula 1 and have used them to create an innovative and exciting range of products for us RC Racers.

I managed to catch up with Roy Bakker from Racing Dutch for an interview


TheRcRacer - How long have you been racing RC?

Roy - I started racing cars from the age of twelve and have spent the next 22 years enjoying the hobby.

Over the years I have driven Nitro and Electric classes. My first car was a Serpent Impact 2wd, soon followed by the Impact 4wd, 705, 710, 720, KM racing H-K1, Capricorn LAB-C01, Serpent 748, Currentl I have a Shepherd Velox V8 to try.

In the electric class I`ve raced TC Stock and Modified, both with a Xray T2 and Spec-R S1, However I also really enjoyed racing the Pro10 class with my Xray X10 for a couple of years, last year I also raced the Yokomo YRF-001 as the F1 class was appealing.  Sounds like I don`t have a life :)
MACH Heemstede has been the host of many great races. (Roy in the yellow)
All this time I've been a member of the famous Dutch racing track MACH Heemstede, over the last few years I’ve also become a  board member of my beloved club.


TheRcRacer - That's a lot of classes, do you have a favourite?

Roy - For me that`s not a difficult question, the 200mm IC class is my favourite. The technical difficulties and close racing really make me enjoy this class. For the Dutch nationals we have a very competitive and friendly group of guys racing on all the tracks. 
Fitting parts to the Serpent 748, ready to test at the track 
We all drive a Novarossi Basic “Sturm” engine and handout tyres, so small performance advantages really make a difference.


TheRcRacer - What made you decide to design your own parts?

Roy - For me it seemed to be a natural extension of my hobby over the years. I got quickly hooked on the hobby and I really enjoyed it. I also studied automotive engineering where I learned the knowledge and tools that can be used to design parts or automotive systems.  This involved a short internship at Donkervoort Sportcars working on the rear suspension of the D8-GT and this really got my motivation hyped up!
The D8-GT Sports car
For a long time production of rc parts was the next difficult step, especially in the manufacturing process.

Now though we are in an exciting era where the 3D printing and the high-end machines such as those used by Shapeways really makes life easy. I`m also finalizing the designs of my production CNC swiss lathe and high speed machining center, so I can make all of the Racing Dutch carbon, aluminum and steel parts myself.


TheRcRacer - Do you have experience in design away from RC cars?

Roy - Over the years I worked in different fields of R&D and engineering. The first job was at Tata steel, a big steel manufacturing company. We worked to correlate the mechanical plasticity -and fracture performance of automotive steel during experiments with the material model data used in FEA simulation, was a very cool job.

After that I worked in the naval industry doing all kinds of structural FEA design and CFD analyses. I  am very proud that I made it onto two very nice Discovery channel “Mighty Ships” episodes with my designs. The last two years I have been in the Aerospace sector. So overall I’ve seen quite a lot of the engineering fields, but really think that it`s all the same. Engineering is engineering.


TheRcRacer - How do you go about designing a racing wing?

Roy - We started with looking at the general specification of a wing in different rulebooks. After that a global design brief is set-up, describing boundaries we would like to have performance wise etc.

An important aspect was to have the same amount of down force compared to the average standard wing that comes with the body due to car balance, but to have this with lower drag was the goal.
The Racing Dutch wing shares similar design philosophies with current F1 wing design
The stepped wing design is fairly known in the F1, the airflow through the separate wing foils helps to speed up the air at the back of the wing. It will stick better to the profile resulting in more down force. After the concept was set-up, a CFD wind tunnel was run again and again as we iterated on the design. Dimensions were optimized and local flow problems were taken care off. When the design was locked a prototype was printed, some final changes in thickness to get the right flexibility were made and the aerofoil was ready to put on the car for some real life testing.


TheRcRacer - Does CFD simulation correlate to the actual track testing?

That`s a difficult one, especially to know exactly. In my opinion I would say yes, but that`s just for myself. If we see a fancy CFD analyses for example, how do we now it`s in any form a representation of reality..? How far can we trust what we see..?
CFD (Computational fluid Dynamics) is used to simulate airflow
Same goes for track testing, some people will not like this, but testing on the track is only possible for a very limited few. If you don`t drive all consecutive laps within 0.1s or 0.2s of lap times, how can really tell you are faster..? I do drive my own designs, I use them all. To be honest, I design them for myself and have this process as part of my hobby.

If the products make you faster, I leave that to the driver that buy`s them..:)


TheRcRacer - Will you offer a range of wings in the future?

Roy - At the moment we`ve designed two types of wings for the 200mm IC class, a medium and high down force version. We believe in the design and don`t think it will change since we optimized the design in a CFD simulation. The wings can be used in a lot of the European National competitions and club racing, the European Nitro Series and maybe even the European Championship. (but for that last one the rules are very open to interpretation..)

A future contender for a Racing Dutch wing will be the 190mm TC class, we have to look at the rules in different countries to find a good overall wing design that will allow it to be used in as many world events as possible.


TheRcRacer - Will you look at other aerodynamic aids after the wing?

Roy - At the moment we are working on a design for a front and rear bumper that could have some aerodynamic effects on the car :) Such bumpers would fit the Serpent748(TQ) with a little bit of hobby work.
Front and Rear bumper design that will increase the aerodynamics of the chassis
So far, CFD analyses shows really nice results, it will give just that extra grip over the whole speed range of the car. With a couple of engineering friends we are trying to get this packages ready, the advantage of working together is the accessibility to all kinds of knowledge, experience and design tools. 
The Racing Dutch design process is cutting edge for RC car development
We hope to design the bumpers for the Capricorn Lab-c03, Mugen MTX-6 and maybe the Xray NT1 or NT2? At the moment most classes can limit further aerodynamic design, but the goal is to look at areas where we can innovate.

Other than aerodynamics parts, we are also focusing on making parts that can allow you to race in the rain, We just like to design cool parts that are not currently available for all RC Racers whilst taking advantage of the 3D printing process.

Thanks to Roy at Racing Dutch for the interview

We will have a closer look at an early 190mm prototype wing soon :) in the meantime you can check out more info from Racing Dutch on their facebook page here and see their current items for sale at Shapeways here


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