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Designing components with snap-fits can save you time and money in production by reducing material costs and part quantities, as well as making assembly easier. In the past, injection molding was the only viable method for producing snap-fit joints in plastics. However, today 3D printing has opened up both new opportunities and challenges in their […]
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Improving part stiffness is critical for load bearing applications, and can be accomplished through both design geometry and material properties. In this article, we’ll employ many of the same formulas we discussed in our previous article about leveraging geometric structures to improve stiffness. However, here we’ll focus on material selection, altering the properties of materials […]
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Once you have modeled your parts in CAD software, you may be tempted to send them off to be manufactured in your 3D printer. However, before doing so you should perform a tolerance analysis to make sure what you’re printing “stacks up.” Tolerance Analysis, or tolerance stack-up as it is sometimes known, is a critical […]
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Determining the correct tolerances to apply to your product design can be challenging. There are natural variations amongst products that occur in mass production and you should plan for these deviations when you are applying tolerances to products. That said, you can decide how much a fabricated product can deviate from the engineering drawing dimensions […]
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Have you recently assembled Ikea furniture? If so, I apologize. I send my condolences for the frustration you experienced when the holes did not line up with the pins you put in other holes or when you realized you were missing a fastener. The good news is that you did gain something from the experience […]
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Known for a having a hardworking and meticulous nature, Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” While you probably aren’t reading this article for tree-felling advice, what Abe was getting at is that careful planning is important for any […]
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Products that are subject to a torsional load often require analysis like the analysis used for bending stiffness. The main differences are the specific material property to be used (Shear Modulus or Modulus of Rigidity) and the polar moment of inertia (which is very similar to the area moment of inertia used in bending). Torsion […]
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In a world of ever-increasing electronics, our lives are continuously impacted by devices that incorporate some sort of heat-generating circuitry. When it comes to electronics that dissipate power in the form of heat during normal operation, it is often necessary to manage this heat, to ensure the components don’t exceed their maximum allowable temperatures. One […]
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Perhaps you watched BattleBots in the early 2000’s, or maybe you recently got into combat robotics and thought to yourself “what goes into building one of these gladiator bots?” Well, we’re team RoboGym, and we’re here to answer your question. We’ve been building and refining our BattleBot, Deadlift for years, and we’ll be guiding you […]
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If you want to know the general lay of the land when it comes to combat robotics and the different types of BattleBots, you can learn about that in Part One of How to Build a BattleBot Like a Pro. If you’re ready to get into the specifics of designing and building a combat robot […]
