Make It Real CAD Engineering Challenge
ellis4garett
Entry ID #: 4301
Created: Tue, Dec 5, 2017 9:12 AM
Make it Real CAD Engineering Challenge When completing this challenge, our group had to make a decision that would decide which part we created. It was a tremendous choice between many good ideas. When we finally found a part that was effective and solved a problem that we were having as a team with our robot, we went to work. Our part is shaped as a large “X”, with holes evenly placed across each leg of the “X”. The reason we made this part is because we were having issues stabilizing our robot we created. Our robot has a sturdy base with a lift built on top. The base is sturdy but when the lift goes up, it is a little unsteady, swaying back and forth. If this part could be placed on our robot it would be placed on the side and back of the lift. With this new part placed on the robot the lift would become more stable and is able to reach a higher point and not shake as much. This new part would play a major role in the stability of our robot for competitions. Our robot's job is to lift a lightweight cone and place at a certain height. There are two major lift heights, one height is 10 inches off the ground to reach the mobile goal, and the other is 2 feet off the ground to reach the stationary goal. When placing the lightly weighted cone, the lift would become more and more unstable with each cone. Our idea was to create a way that will stabilize the robot structurally. Our idea came from a structurally safe building, for example skyscrapers. Many buildings can be made extremely tall and safe if they have a good structure, and many structures stabilities come from the sides, they of course have a strong base but also many buildings have beams to support, ‘X’ shaped beams on the side or even in the center. This new component to the robot would act like a supporting beam to the lift. The ‘X’ shape part is made extremely thin and lightweight, being a major pro to the design. Right now our robot is using two heavy pieces that are screwed to form the “X” shape. With this light weight design, this lift does not have to work as hard to lift up unnecessary weight, improving the reliability the lift has. When creating this component, we used the program Autodesk Fusion 360 Inventor. The first step in creating this part was to lay out a base. The idea we had is to sketch out the entire thing, then extrude what was necessary. The first thing done is to create an ‘X” base, the way we created the X base is with two rectangles. When the length was correct the next step was to create an even length hole across one of the legs of the “X”. After this was done we circulated the rectangles, placing them around the other leg. With this done all the rectangles are the same length and in the same spot as every other leg. When this was done, our part was ready to be extruded. When extruding we extruded the “X” base without extruding the square sketches place on each leg. There was a total of five squares placed. When the extruding was finished, our part was officially done. We have learned that, anything we think of can be created on inventor with ease. We can let our imagination go crazy, finding solutions to problems, and create anything that was impossible before. We will be using the 3D design software in the future. This software is extremely useful and comes in hand for any class project, or even using it to create something that can be built by hand, seeing how it comes together. This program can help us visually see a robot design that we are thinking of building, this program would help us see it before, and see how it works thus making our robot the best it can be. Yes this software would help us greatly in the future, impacting our career. Everyone on my team is a hard working person that will go far in the future, and I believe that using this program will help us make life easier, and help us bring out our creativity.
