Autodesk Inventor and the 3D Printed Car

I have had students using Autodesk Inventor and Slic3r to design cars for awhile now. Students can design cars both with moving wheels and stationary. the cars are very easy to design, a 12 year old student has no problem going through the tutorial and producing the stationary wheel car in about an hour. As far as learning goes this project exposes students to a wide range of 3D modeling and printing techniques. Prior to designing the cars in Inventor teachers could go through the design process with the students and have them design their car around a given brief, or just let them have some fun with it. In order to differentiate the instruction of this project as much as possible I have made a written/picture tutorial and a video tutorial.

Fab Learn Australia conference document

Written Tutorial Part 1 -Modeling the moving car

Written Tutorial Part 2 - Inventor assembly of moving car

Written Tutorial Part 3 - Slic3r set up

Written stationary car tutorial (Inventor 2012)

Moving Car Video Tutorials

             Video Tutorial Part 1 

             Video Tutorial Part 2

             Video Tutorial Part 3

             Video Tutorial Part 4

Stationary Car Video Tutorials

     

           Video Tutorial Part 1

           Video Tutorial Part 2

Introduction to Sumo Robot Design

This is both an introduction to Inventor and an introduction in to sumo robotics. The idea is that students run through the tutorial learning how to design a sumo bot. once this tutorial is completeted students have to design their own bot. The simplicity of the tutorial keeps the kids designs simple. Watch for more sumo tutorials in the near future.

Get the file here!

ROV student project

Have you ever wanted your own submarine? The Beatles sure did. This is a great design project for students. they have to use AutoDesk Inventor to design a ROV (remote operated vehicle)
The goal of this project is to complete a ROV that can complete a task. The task normally consists of moving things, but obstacle courses and racing are also possible. This project consists of 5 parts, design, construction, testing, refining, and competing.
These projects work very well with grade 10 -12 students. It covers all of the fundamentals of Autodesk Inventory and design.

ROV design files

Intro to GibbsCAM

There are a million CAM programs out there. The one that I use is GibbsCAM it is a very versatile program endorsed by Jay Leno. So it's got to be good. Any way, this is my intro tutorial which merges an AutoDesk Inventor file with GibbsCAM and then is exported to Mach 3. It is a very unique assignment, but if you have all three software programs and you need a place to start this is it.

Link:

GibbsCAM 1