Re: How do you prototype?
 

I was a design engineer doing 3D CAD work for 5 years. The most useful thing I ever did was print up a scaled drawing of a part, and tape it together to use as an example when explaining it to others. Call it poor man's rapid prototyping, it's really the way to go for mocking up parts.

No matter how awesome your skills are are doing 3D models, you still only display them on a 2D surface. Adding that 3rd dimension is very helpful to get group understanding. Not everyone has the inate ability to see things in 3D without them actually BEING in 3D.

Re: How do you prototype?
 

And K'nex!!! More kids these days need K'nex!

Re: How do you prototype?
 

Yep, we do that too. The cardboard is stiff enough to stand on its own...

Re: How do you prototype?
 

You can download both AutoDesk and Creo products free here. and I think through usfirst.org.

Re: How do you prototype?
 

That's Neanderthal plastic thinking. Lego technic beats the k-stuff without hardly trying.

Re: How do you prototype?
 

Knex has a distinct advantage in large structures.

Re: How do you prototype?
 

The 4.5' Super Star Destroyer in my kitchen disagrees...


79 uses wood for prototyping mechanisms. Old chassis if we need to proto drive trains. On 27 we used a lot of PVC and wood. In any case, drills are a great way to power things.

Re: How do you prototype?
 

Stands as my favorite prototyping guide to date. Check it out! I hope you find it helpful.

http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/131

Re: How do you prototype?
 

Lots of wood and legos

We work out of a wood shop, so that may not be an option for you, but its pretty easy to slap ideas together with wood and then improve on them.

Re: How do you prototype?
 

We do CAD all of our parts, so we don't do much drivetrain prototyping. We have an old C Base chassis that we use to mount our test designs and concepts.

Our prototypes are generally from wood, old c-base chassis rails (11 year old team, we have a lot of them), and small pieces of aluminum, as well as some old copy machine rollers that we use as pulleys for belt driven prototypes. All of our prototypes are powered by old motors that are not FIRST legal anymore, old CIMs in CIMple boxes, and hand drills with the chucks tightened around the shaft.

We built a few wire leads with battery connectors and household light switches, and alligator clips on the other end. We also have an old, half-working compressor mounted under a workbench, with a regulator and a few old air tanks, and some manually controlled, momentary solenoids to test out and pneumatic stuff that we design.

I find that being able to prototype with pneumatics is very important in the design process, and also, never throw out old aluminum pieces, especially extra c-base rails, as they are really well made for prototyping (you dont have to drill extra holes to attach wood parts).

Good luck, T-Minus 3 hours, 20 minutes.

Re: How do you prototype?
 

CAD and 3-d printing:

Re: How do you prototype?
 

Since my team builds our robots out of wood, we have lots of scrap everything lying around the shop that we put into prototyping. We built an entire 2nd base out of scraps and the spare parts for our robot and had a programmable base to learn how the mechanums act before anything else on the robot got off of the thought and paper stage. We still have most of it kicking around to which is kind of surprising.