Coin Chassis
For this project I needed to design a chassis that would hold no less than, 50 pennies, 40 nickles, 50 dimes, and 40 quarters. As of writing this my main design is still in the works, it is a model of Bender from Futurama that fits coins inside in metal chest. That is way harder than I expected so I put together a place holder chassis that will serve as a filler until I finish my proper one. If you see photos of my Bender project throughout, that means I stopped being lazy.
Step 1
Before I opened up Inventor I needed to do a little thinking, using the US Minting website I found the dimensions of the various coins and put together a design that would fit these with as little wasted space as possible. I also multiplied the heights of the coins by the number of coins needed to find a height. I rounded these values for my own ease. (calculations seen below)
Step 2
Next I made made by design in Inventor by extruding a square and then cutting circles into it. Note that I made the holder taller than my design because I wanted the base to be thick enough for structural purposes.
Step 3
With the design finished I moved it over to Makerbot, and scaled it according to the rubric.
Step 4
Printing of the body, unfortunately I left the head to print over spring break so I wasn't able to get any photos of it printing
Finished Product
Summary
The biggest thing I learned from this project is the value of planning. Most of my time spent during this process was in my notebook working with different designing and trying to find the most logical solution to my problem. Depending on when you read this you may see my bender project which I spent several hours planning out and thinking of all the little things that go into the design like making the holder area a few extra mm to make sure the coins fit well. Onto the actual design I learned a lot more of the advanced tools in Inventor to make the design look accurate and cool. Most of these skills I learned where self-taught and extremely frustrating to learn. Finally I learned the that it takes what feels like forever for the 3-D printer to make stuff, I made a small pirate ship for fun and it took 2 hours for a small 3in design. As of writing this my main design is printing and is estimated to take 21 hours. Overall this was my favorite rotation because I find working in Inventor to be extremely fun, interesting, and challenging.