Free car bodies help engineering students
get their education rolling…

Every year, University of Colorado at Boulder Mechanical Engineering Professor Larry Carlson teaches MCEN 1025 to approximately 200 first year engineering students.  The class is “Computer Aided Design and Fabrication,” where students learn about modern concurrent engineering design processes, drawings, and solid modeling.   A large part of the course is learning 3D CAD using SolidWorks, where teams of students collaborate on an innovation to an existing plastic component in the marketplace.

The assignment is to design a new body for a ZipZap® racer, a radio controlled car available at most electronics supply stores.  Students take an existing car, remove the body, take measurements, evaluate how the bodies fit, then brainstorm new ideas for their very own car body.

Using SolidWorks, the students turn those ideas into a 3D CAD file, which include not only the mechanics required to secure the body to the existing chassis, but all the custom bumpers, graphics, propellers, roll cages, bells, and whistles you’d expect to see on a car body designed by engineering students.

The only design constraints are a 2” x 3” x 2” build envelope, and the body must be able to work with the existing car chassis.  The only other limitation is the imagination of the students, but from the level of detail displayed on various tanks, 4x4’s, ocean waves, golf carts, and wiener-mobiles that we’ve seen on the car bodies in the past, lack of imagination does not seem to be a problem, and once the design has been modeled in 3D, a solid model is just a click away.

And this is where Protogenic comes in… for every year since 2004 Protogenic has been happy to sponsor Prof. Carlson’s engineering class, by taking all of the car bodies designed by the students and turning them into real-life 3D models, using its Stereolithography equipment.  Protogenic then donates all of the car models to the university, and for the first time the students are able to hold in their hands something they’ve created in CAD space, an experience that is as rewarding as it is educational. 

The students then sand and paint the models, and present them to the rest of the class as part of their final presentation.  They learn about solid modeling, how to work within a set of constraints, and they get to experience first hand some of the true benefits of rapid prototyping.  Protogenic enjoys the exposure it gets at the University, and in fact presents a guest lecture about rapid prototyping to the entire class as part of the sponsorship.  It's our hope that many of these students end up becoming tomorrow's successful mechanical engineers, and we're happy to make their experience in MCEN 1025 a memorable one.

To see all of the students’ cars from 2003, click here

To see all of the students' cars from 2004, click here 

To see all of the students' cars from 2005,  click on both the spring and fall sections.

To see all of the students' cars from 2006, click here

To see all of the students' cars from 2007, click here

To see all of the students' cars from 2008, click here

Also, this project has its own web page here.

And you can learn more about the University of Colorado at Boulder's mechanical engineering department at their web site, here, and be sure contact a Protogenic sales representave if you have any questions about this sponsorship program, or some of the other capabilities at Protogenic.