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Elastic Vehicle Drivetrain

Elastic Vehicle Drivetrain

Ask

  1. Project Challenge

    We were tasked with making a car that is propelled by using rubber band elasticity.

    Some of the criteria was:
    • Design should be 3D printable.
    • Designs should use less than 200 grams of filament.
    • Parts must have printed wheels
    • The design must contain at least 3 moving parts
    • Wheels can not be larger than 3 inches in diameter
    • The design must be powered only by a single rubber band
    • The printed design must have moving bodies.
    • The design must not exceed 6" x 4" x 4"

Research

  1. Design Research

    I did very little research into this besides watching some videos on how these rubber band cars work. The idea was very simple, just make a rubber band wrap around an axle and it moves forward. So I honestly just went straight into designing.

Imagine

Imagine Image

  1. Design Concept

    I didn't really know how to make multiple different designs for this project because it was so simple to make. But is one of my sketches.

Plan

Plan Image

  1. Design Plan

    I was working with a team so one of my friends designed the chassis of the car where the axle would go through. Then I designed the wheels and we decided to just use three wheels instead. A screenshot of my cad model is below

Create

Create Image

  1. Construction Process

    We 3d printed it, theres an image below. We used a 10% infill density for most of the parts. And for almost all of them we used a tree support pattern.

Evaluate/Reflection

  1. Project Evaluation

    It went an average of 8.5 feet. It met most of the criteria as well which is great. And we didnt make any other prototypes.