Rapid Prototyping

Projects

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Toy Concepts

The purpose of this project was to design three children’s toys and present one of them to the class.  The toy had to attract child’s attention, to be interact, fun, self- explanatory, durable, safe, and encourage child’s senses and creativity.   The toys had to be presented in a HTML based web layout, and a basic presentation explaining one of the toy designs had to be presented to the class.  Each presentation was taped and self-evaluation of presentation had to be completed. The design process was difficult at first, but once I learned that most ideas for new toys came from improving on older toys or taking the concepts from two different toys and combining them into one toy.  I came up with Balance-O-Magnets, Foam Disk Shooter, and Wire Racer.  The communication in this part of the class was based on the presentation.  You had to communicate what you designed, how it worked, how the child would interact with the toy, how it would stimulate the child’s senses, and the cost, durability, construction and safety of the toyI had to evaluate myself based on the presentation (including word choice, organization, voice projection, posture and body language) and materials used.  After viewing my video documentation, I realized that I never use complete sentences and link one thought to the next by “ands” and “ums”.  I learned that presentations rely heavily on the relay of information in a clear, concise, and interesting manner.

Manufacturing Process

The manufacturing assembly project involved the making of a certain part by different groups, such that the assembly formed a crank-gear-propeller unit.  The project was divided into three sections: research to find processes that best suit the prototyping of the part, the research of specific assigned process, and the design of the part.  Each section of the process required teamwork and patience, because during the rapid prototyping process you always run into troubles.  During section one, our group realized that research some yields empty results and secondary and more in depth searches are necessary.  After finding useful results, the decision as to what process will yield the best results at the cheapest cost with the fastest turn-a-time had to be decided.  Section two, involved in depth and expansive research into a specific process. Once again our group encountered numerous information problems but those too were overcome by better search methods and more time spent researching.  Finally, section 3 involved the transformation of a part in an IronCAD format to a part that was compatible with our specific process, the one that was best suited for our part. One major obstacle that we encountered was our lack of knowledge of ProE, which led to some tension, but after a few meetings and complex discussion along with some guidance, the group came to the conclusion that we must recruit outside help.  I learned that if initial attempts yield no results determination will help in leading you toward your goal, that you should never give up, and that recruit outside help if necessary.

In-class Prototype Test

The students participating in our engineering outreach project will be learning about communication techniques, teamwork, and problem solving skills as well as the basic properties of electricity and circuits.  We decided as a group to the electricity as the catalyst for the creation and implementation of a communication language. The decision to base the activity around a communication language, was because we understand that communication is an integral part of success in engineering.  During the steps of this project, our group encountered a few problems and from those problems, I thought there must be at least one person in the group who accommodates everyone else’s needs, whether the conflict is a class or from overloaded coursework. Other things I learned about were , that tolerance is necessary to keep the scope of the project on track, and that when fiends are our partners then a facilitor is necessary to keep the creative ideas flowing and the goals of the particular meeting in focus.

Meeting of the Minds

To be truthful, I did not learn anything useful at the Meeting of the Minds. Except that while door prizes might attract people to your event, you need other events to displace the result the of the door prizes being gone.

 

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