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How-to guide

Build an active aero wing

Everything needed to put an autonomous, self-contained rear wing on your own car: the CAD and the print settings, the bracket and the actuation, the wiring, the firmware, and how to calibrate the thresholds on a real road.

Being written up now

The build is finished and on the car. I am turning the working notes into something you can actually follow, step by step, with the files attached. The full write-up of how it was designed and tested is already up if you want the reasoning in the meantime.

What it will cover.

01
Bill of materials
Every part with the reason it was chosen, and what to buy instead if you cannot get it.
02
The airfoil and the CAD
Drawing a cambered section that makes downforce at a shallow angle, and the files to start from.
03
Printing the sections
Splitting a 1,400 mm span onto a consumer bed, with the infill, walls and orientation that held up.
04
Dowels, welding and assembly
Aligning the modules, then fusing the seams so the wing behaves as one structural element.
05
Bracket and actuation
The servo pocket, the hinge axis, and the custom horn that takes the slop out of the linkage.
06
Wiring the electronics
The full circuit: microcontroller, IMU, servos and the buck converter, and why the servos bypass the board.
07
Firmware
The three-state controller, the moving average, and the debounce that stops a pothole deploying the airbrake.
08
Mounting and calibration
Getting it on the car, finding your own gravity offset, and tuning the thresholds on a real road.
Read how it was designed and tested The full write-up: the CFD, the three modes, the fabrication, and the part that broke the first time out.