Toy Race Car
Bringing a dream toy car to reality through injection molding
Timeline
5 weeks
Team Project
Skills
Manufacturing, Injection Molding, CNC routing, NX CAM, MoldFlow, SolidWorks
Goal
Transform a middle school team’s toy race car dream into reality. Utilize scalable manufacturing techniques and design for speed and aesthetics.
The Vision
The students drew us a sketch of what they wanted: a turtle car.
We used this to mock up a model in SolidWorks and checked in with the students for feedback.
We started by modeling a car in SolidWorks. We worked around the constrains of the aluminum block thickness and size.
We uploaded the plates to Siemens NX CAM to create the cutting path CNC machine. It is exported as g-code, a language that the CNC can interpret and use to follow the toolpaths and switch between tools.
We machined the plates in the metal shop.
Once that was completed, we did our injection-molding process. We initially had short shot and flash defects, but after 15 runs, we determined the optimized machine settings.
We sealed the surfaces with a white coat of primer. Then, the students painted cars for the race.
Our team won best in show!