RC Car Design and Manufacturing
Objectives
Design and manufacture 40 RC car drivetrains.
Outcomes and Contributions
40 rock crawler style RC cars needed to be produced ahead of an obstacle course competition at the end of the semester. My team was tasked with designing and producing the drivetrain unit for each of the 40 cars. My responsibility was to prepare the gears for assembly, manufacture the axles for the gear box, machine divots in the drive, and perform intermediate manufacturing steps, such as facing, reaming, drilling, and tapping, to manufacture other drivetrain components. As parts were produced, I assembled several drivetrain assemblies and installed them on RC cars.
Technical Details
My first task was to ensure that the gears were ready to be installed. I noticed in our initial prototype that the gears, which had been manufactured and provided to us by the course staff, did not slide easily onto the axles. To solve this issue, I reamed out the 265 gears needed to complete 40 assemblies. This made the assembly process much easier as the gears simply slid onto the axles without excessive force. Along with the gears, I created a cutting jig to easily cut axles to the appropriate size without measuring. This jig reduced the time needed to produce each axle, lowering the overall process time. In our first prototype, we observed that the set screws holding the final drive gear and the drive wheels to the drive axle were slipping due to vibrations. To prevent this, I machined divots into the axle at predetermined distances to ensure the set screw sat deeper in the axle, preventing any side-to-side movement. Further details can be found in our design and manufacturing review presentations.
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