Design Process

Wood is the Way to Go

Most of our mechanisms are made out of laser-cut wood. We make many versions of our mechanisms with cheap and fast laser-cut 6mm baltic birch plywood. We have implemented a tab-and-slot system for joints to be strong without any glue, just using nuts and bolts. This allows for fast assembly and multiple iterations.

3D CAD with SOLIDWORKS

We use SOLIDWORKS for Computer Aided Design. Students get copies of the professional software and become proficient in CAD in a matter of months. Designs get quickly sent to our laser- cutter for easy fabrication, and students can go home knowing that they followed their design from idea to final product.

Just how strong is it?

Watch us drive a car over our old wooden drivebase to see how strong our tab-and-slot system with plywood really is.

Spoiler Alert: It's pretty strong.