Driving Innovation
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) is a professional society representing manufacturing professionals in North American for more than 90 years. The SC Upstate Chapter of SME provides benefits to local members through technical meetings, plant tours, skills competitions, training & certifications, career advancement and networking. Local members work in a variety of industries and have diverse career backgrounds.
SME Upstate Chapter Vision
Our vision is to empower students & professionals to lead Upstate South Carolina’s future manufacturing innovation, education, and collaborative efforts.
Driving Education Through Community Engagement
Our SME chapter is excited about our collaborative initiative, the CO2 Dragster Derby competitions. The overall goal for the C02 Dragster Derby competitions is to have small preliminary events throughout 2025 that culminate into a future events in following years that bringing together professionals with colleges (4-5 local universities), high schools and middle schools targeting particularly strong Math, Engineering, and STEAM programs and fostering opportunities in other schools that show interest to race and develop their enthusiasm for engineering and problem solving. With sponsorships from local businesses and organizations, this has the potential to expand into an annual Upstate educational event.
More About the CO2 Dragster Derby
Bolstering community engagement, the SME Upstate Chapter is embarking on a journey to bring the experience of CO2 dragster racing to South Carolina’s students and also industry technical professionals. This chapter is developing this program to foster collaborations between manufacturers, academia, professionals, and students. These collaborations will provide an environment of fun, education, and fellowship that is lacking in the area. CO2 racing in this form has had tremendous growth around the world with formal championships being held annually.
Our SME chapter is seeking sponsorships to help obtain the track infrastructure that can be moved from various competition sites, educational materials, and car building sets. The track simulates a to scale a quarter-mile racetrack. Because metric dragsters are about 1/20 the size of real dragsters, the track’s racing distance, from the start to the finish line, is 20 meters – 1/20 of a quarter mile. This simplifies mathematical comparisons to real race cars. The elevated track consists of 2 track lines with a starting mechanism to fire the CO2 cartridges. This is also an electronic timing device to provide a digital scoring method to the race. Our chapter will demo this track in February at the SC Automotive Summit and compete in October at SME SouthTec in Greenville bringing further awareness of our chapter.
These CO2 Dragster Derby competitions will work as a liaison between industry and SC governmental entities that focus on stimulating engineering creativity and design within the community. Our chapter plans to procure the necessary materials including the track, scoring mechanisms, and the car blanks to issue out to different educational entities for manufacturing and design.
