Jesse Brown
WingMan 12
Transforming a 3rd grade sketch to a real life toy
Skills
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3D CAD/CAM
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Injection Molding
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Metrology
Course Project
Prompt
This school course gave teams drawings from 3rd graders at the local elementary school. It was our task to take these drawings and manufacture our interpretations as toys to give back to the kids.
Approach
Result
In the end, we were able to present the final product to the 3rd grader that inspired the design. He and his parents enjoyed seeing the sketch come to real life. This project showed that there are many factors in the injection molding process that will cause the manufactured part to vary from what was designed.
The first step was to identify key features and create a sketch of our own to eventually model in SolidWorks.
We decided to use the pin and hole attachment method to join the two halves of the shoe. Based on the polypropylene material, we set the wall thickness to 1.25 inches. This gives plenty of space for the pins and holes while preserving even cooling during molding.
When creating the CAM to manufacture the molds, we had to consider the various limitations of the CNC Haas Mini Mill and the tools available. The core and cavities are the result of many operations including: Cavity, Contour, Planar, and Drilling. We used various sized ball and end mill tools for roughing and finishing passes.
The injection molding process proved to be an experiment of locking in certain parameters. We were adjusting the shot and hold times to eliminate flash and warping in the part. Once we found the right settings, we produced multiple parts and performed a metrology on the variations from part to part.
