Bootcamp Revamp + Target Skills

Owned by Megan Spee
2023-05-11
1 min read

idea/content dump via @Megan Spee

Solidworks:

  • Define your sketches

  • Focus on defining parts of the object that are important - if a specific angle or diameter is integral to the part working, prioritize dimensioning that feature specifically, and don’t just use an adjacent dimension that defines it ‘well enough’. Show an example photo here.

  • Use construction lines. Use constraints when you can. If you want to go back and edit a part later, it should not take very long.

Maybe we reevaluate the naming convention because it kinda sucks.

Material specifics:

  • When designing for something, material choice is critical, and that should come before you finalize the part’s design. You will need to adjust how the part is designed based on material and manufacturing technique.

    • Aluminum/metal milling

    • Wood

    • Sheet metal

    • Acrylic or polycarbonate

    • PVC

    • PLA, PETG, 3D printing filament

    • Carbon fiber/fiberglass, either molding or laminate

Each material has different properties, which can be affect by how they are machined or built.

Isotropic materials are materials that act uniformly when stress is applied to any different axes - an example of this is aluminum. 3D prints are not isotropic - the axis normal to the print bed is far more susceptible to shear forces than the other 2 axes. Carbon fiber tubing can be non-isotropic as well - non-twill, which is just pulled carbon fiber, is very weak when submitted to axial loading, as the carbon fiber strands are literally “pulled” in manufacture and arranged straight through the tube. Force right on the end will split these fibers.

Tolerancing parts crash course. We usually don’t tolerance things, but if you know what you’re doing, please do tolerance things that you feel necessary.