Mechanical Making

Machine Tools and Shops

A machine shop is a workshop with tools primarily used for subtractive manufacturing - the making of products by cutting into materials - such as lathes, mills, drill presses, and laser cutters. Most machine shops now also include tools for additive manufacturing, such as 3D printers.

To help give you a sense of what different tools are often available in a shop, take a look at the StuffMadeHere shop tour, below. Although that video shows a particularly well-equipped shop - particularly for one person - many prototyping shops, including the Beaver Works shop, have a similar mix of tools.

You can see a virtual tour of the MIT Beaver Works space here. Try to find your way to the prototyping shop. What machines do you see? And importantly, what safety equipment do you see?

For the CRE[AT]E Challenge, we also want to think about what maker tools are available to you at home, through your school, prototyping services, or at a local makerspace.

Maker spaces are community prototyping shops that can often be a great resource for tools, supplies, and prototyping expertise. Find and tell us about a maker space near you (including ones in your school!). What is it called? Where is it? What tools are available, and how does one get access to it? If you don't have one nearby, tell us about the closest one you can find.

3D Printing

3D printing is the name for a collection of methods by which a computer-controlled device creates a three-dimensional object by adding parts bit by bit. It can be used to create a large variety of different objects designed in software, using various materials. 3D printing is an increasingly common method of quickly prototyping products, since the manufacturing process is automatic and can be done in a relatively small space.

For this section, please watch the following video introducing 3D printing:

Questions:

What is the most common type of 3D printing filament?

What is G-code, and how is it usually generated?

What does infill refer to?

What are the ways that model orientation might affect a 3D print?

For an FDM printer, what is another reason to use certain model orientations over others that was not mentioned in the video? Hint: Think about what might happen with a lever that was printed lying horizontally on the bed vs one that was standing vertically on the print bed.

Computer-Aided Design

When we want to create parts for a product, we typically need to be very specific about their designs. It isn't enough to hand a manufacturer a sketch on a napkin and expect to get back what you had in mind. The same goes when we use technologies such as 3D printing or laser cutting. A 3D printer will certainly have far more trouble understanding your napkin sketch than a human, so we'll need to give the computer information in a format that it understands. This means starting with computer-aided design, or CAD.

In this module, we'll be introducing you to Onshape, a web-based CAD program that will allow you to create sketches, 3D parts, and assemblies, that can be used to design a prototype, and used for manufacturing (e.g. 3D printing a part). Many other options for CAD tools exist out there, but Onshape has the convenience of being free for academic use, and putting everyone on the same platform (mostly) regardless of hardware specs because it runs in a browser.

Please create an account for Onshape Education through https://www.onshape.com/products/education, using the "Get Started" button. This should be a free account.

To familiarize yourself with Onshape, we recommend completing the following modules under Self-Paced Courses in the Onshape Learning Center (learn.onshape.com): Navigating Onshape, Introduction to Sketching, and Part Design Using Part Studios. You are, of course, free to do more if you would like!

Onshape is not the only CAD software out there. Fusion 360 and Tinkercad (both by Autodesk) are two other popular options, and are free for students.