Rapid prototyping for kids

Abstract

Rapid prototyping technologies have been contributing greatly in driving down the production time and cost in the design and manufacturing industries. The recent popularity of Rapid Prototyping applications has led to a growing demand for more comprehensive educational tools in these fields. Integrating Rapid Prototyping concepts into toys and games, we can produce educational toys with the purpose to educate kids about Rapid Prototyping concepts. We successfully designed a conceptual toy that can be used as a tool to implicitly educate basic Rapid Prototyping principles to children, as well as providing them creative design experience. In addition we successfully produced a prototype based on the principles of the toy. In the first part of the report, the methodology to arrive to the solution, which consists of functional analysis and conceptual design, will be explained in details. This followed by the rules of thumb and principles to improve the selected designs which will be described in the embodiment design. After that, the material and part selections will be illustrated in the detailed design. Finally the price of the design is determined.