Learning Design though a CNC Mini-Car Project
Vincent Chan
Ryerson University
[email protected]
Abstract 2 Objectives
A design project is used to reinforce concepts of The primary objective of this project is to reinforce the
CAD/CAM and CNC machining in a second year lecture and lab material on advanced manufacturing.
manufacturing course in mechanical engineering. However, equally important is the exposure of the
Students are required to design mini-cars from a students to the design process, from start to the
common kit of stock materials. For many of the finished prototype.
students, this was their first attempt at a design project
for which a working prototype is required. A survey at The project is used to introduce students to many
the end of the project suggested to the effectiveness of design concepts, such as defining the problem, stetting
the project. the goals, generating and the selection of design
solutions. Projects have been successfully used to
1 Introduction teach students the intricacies of engineering design
[1][2]. In this particular project, students must
implement knowledge from many of their earlier
An important part of the design process is the courses, such as calculating wheel torque from first
realisation of a working prototype. Often, unexpected principles taught in physics, or designing a gear train
problems and issues arise that are not anticipated by from their mechanics of machines course.
the engineer. The second year manufacturing course
offered at Ryerson University, through the use of
CAD/CAM software and CNC machining allows 3 Description of the Project
student teams to convert their designs to a working
prototype. The student’s goal is to design and build a mini-car
that will win the competition at the end of the project.
Students are introduced to the use of G-code language Each team is provided with the same basic kit of
used for CNC machines during the lectures. The labs materials. To ensure that no team has an advantage
are used to expose students to the generation of G- over another, no other materials can be added to the
code through the use of CAD/CAM software, kit, other than glue or paint. Students are also not
specifically, MasterCAM. Both the lectures and labs permitted to use any power tools from home, as all
are reinforced by a semester long project, where parts must be created on the lab’s CNC machines.
student teams design, build and race in a competition a
mini-car. Project kits are made up of commonly available
materials and a list can be seen on Table 1. It is up to
Similar to many engineering programs, the program at each team to decide through their designs whether to
Ryerson is heavily loaded with courses in the basic completely use their kit of materials.
math and sciences in the first two years. This course
marks one of the first engineering projects where the Extra parts are provided, should the students make
students can apply the theoretical knowledge that they errors. However, the students must still prove that
have learned. their design is possible with the original kit of parts.
In addition, the amount of time available to the
students in the CNC lab is limited, so the students
must plan their time carefully. The prototype mini-
cars are weighed before the competition to ensure
compliance.
Table 1 List of kit parts the other optimized for torque. A more complex
transmission must be balanced against the cost of
• 4 - sheets of medium density fiberboard (MDF), additional weight and use of the limited material.
4”x 7”x. 1/4” (nominal)
• 5 - size #64 rubber bands
In order to facilitate the design process, students are
• 2 - ball point pens given a refresher on the concepts of design. Each
• 2 - paper clips team is required to define for their design the mini-
• 6 - #8-1/2” long sheet metal pan head screws
cars characteristics, functional requirements and the
• 1 – small wax birthday cake candle constraints, given the three different competitions.
• 1 – 8-1/2” x 11” sheet of photo copy paper.
• 1 - small D.C. electric motor
Once each team reaches their conceptual design, they
• 1 – twin AA battery case (batteries not included) must break their design down into sub-modules. For
example, a mini-car may be broken down into a
Students are introduced to the project at the first chassis, transmission and wheel assembly. These sub-
lecture of the course. The first month is used to design modules are then used to design the individual parts of
their team’s mini-car in Solidworks CAD software. the mini-car. However, as the kit given to each
Concurrently, the students are taught G-code in the student team as a limited number of materials, the
lectures and learn MasterCAM in the labs. The design must often go through several iterations. A
second month, students use the lab time to generate typical layout of all the machine parts on the four
the necessary G-code to machine their car parts. The MDF boards is shown in Figure 1.
third month is spent in the CNC lab, machining their
cars, with the competition held at the end of the third
month. A small portion of the final project marks are 5 Project Implementation
awarded depending on how well their mini-car
performs at the competition. More importantly to the After the introduction of the project to the class,
students, the winning team gets “bragging” rights. students are typically very excited to be able to
implement some of the theory they have been learning.
Although undergraduate courses in manufacturing A large number of very different and unique designs
often have a component of CNC machining, the parts are developed by the student teams. Most design have
that are made are often simple and only have one or cars with four wheels, some with three and even a few
two fitting pieces [3][4][5][6]. Due to the designs have been proposed with only two wheels.
requirements of the mini-car, multiple fitting parts
must be designed, often with sliding and rotating One of the main problems with using computer
interfaces. By spreading the machining labs over simulations is that students can get the impression that
several weeks, the students can plan and optimise their what looks good on the computer screen will work
machining strategy for the next machining session. perfectly in the real world. For example, students can
This experience, combined with the theory taught in direct the CAM software to cut parts out of the stock
the lectures, reinforces the student’s learning cycle. material before the interior details of that part are
milled. In the verification simulation in MasterCAM,
this would show as simply a series of cuts. It does not
4 The Design Phase show the part breaking free, as it does on a real CNC
machine, before the mill tries to cut the interior of the
In the one month design phase, students must set their part.
design goals. During the competition, each team will
test their vehicles in a number of races. These races Before being allowed to machine their parts, each
test different attributes of the mini-car; drag race, student team is taught how to set up the CNC milling
tractor-pull, and up-hill off-road. Given the limited machine, how the mount the stock material onto the
amount of materials, students must first decide if their machining bed and to specify the part zero.
mini-car will be optimized to perform well in either Emergency stops on the machines are identified as
some or all of the races. For example, a mini-car well as other safety procedures.
designed for speed may not have the torque to perform
well in the tractor-pull competition. However,
students could elect to design a two speed
transmission, with one setting optimized for speed and
After the first machining session, the students are
often more realistic about what can be cut, and how
this can affect their designs. They also think seriously
about their cutting strategy, both to reduce errors in
the cutting order, but also to reduce the time required
to cut their parts. A picture of a mini-car design with
its parts laid on the four MDF boards is shown in
Figure 1. A picture of one completed mini-car is
shown in Figure 2.
Figure 3 Up-hill off-road race track
6 Project Assessments
To assess the effectiveness of the mini-car project, the
students were surveyed at the end of the term. A
twelve question survey was developed, with the
questions grouped into three main questions,
addressing the objectives of Design, Teamwork and
General Engineering application. Table 2 outlines the
questions that were asked and the results of the survey.
Figure 1 Mini-Car design layout
As can be seen in Table 2, the overall response to the
project is quite positive. Using a scale of 1 to 5 to
rank the validity of each question, where 1 was
strongly agree, and 5 representing strongly disagree,
the response of the four design questions was a rating
of 1.9. Of the four questions in the teamwork section,
the average rating was 1.7. Although this is the
second year that this cohort of students have been
together, the required amount of teamwork required to
complete a project of this complexity forced students
to work cooperatively. Of the questions in the general
section, an overwhelming response of 50% strongly
agreeing that this is an “effective way to teach CNC
machining”.
6 Conclusions and Recommendations
It is often hard to get students excited about the
Figure 2 Assemble mini-car engineering curriculum. This is especially true when
learning G-code programming, which at best, can be
described as tedious. The mini-car project have far
For the competition, one of the universities exceeded expectations, not only reinforcing classroom
gymnasiums was booked. Lanes were set up for the theory taught in the manufacturing class, but
drag races, tractor pulls and a plywood obstacle was reinforcing concepts and theories from the students
built for the up-hill off-road race, as shown in Figure other classes. Discussions with other professors in the
3. Points were awarded for each stage of the races, department have revealed that students have been
and an overall winning team was declared. talking to them to discuss design possibilities. At the
competition, not only were students from the course students were able to improve their design as they
attending, but students from other years and programs. were machining parts.
Given the “hands-on” nature of this project, students
Table 2 Results of the questionnaire have been given an appreciation of the complexities of
producing a prototype design. Although CAD
packages such as Solidworks offer powerful utilities
Disagree
Disagree
Strongly
Strongly
Opinion
Agree
Agree
such as interference checking, the variances due to
No
machining, assembly requirements and maintenance
must be considered in any successful design. By
building a physical prototype, these design
1. The project was 33% 62% 5% 0% 0%
effective in applying complexities are made more acutely to the student
theory taught in class. than can be through standard lectures.
2. The project also 15 75 10 0 0
allowed me to apply
theory from other
classes.
3. The project taught 19 67 14 0 0 References
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This became evident as students who only produced
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able to leave the fourth machining session early. As
the CAD/CAM labs were available for their use,
