Monday July 11, 2016 at 4:00pm
Jonathan Pawson, an Engineering student at Cambridge University tells us what he has been up to during his 4 week placement with Solid Solutions.
I’m Jonathan, a student studying engineering at Cambridge
university and on a placement with Solid Solutions for the next 4 weeks.
I started using SOLIDWORKS back at school in 6th
Form and it became an essential part of my A-levels printing out part of my
final project. Since then I haven’t used it much, having not done much CAD at
university and that which we have done using Creo.
My time at Solid Solutions is split between training
courses, experiencing different aspects of the company (tech support, sales,
marketing, etc.) and a personal project (to design and build something…
anything!)
During this first week I’ve been sitting in on the
essentials course to build up a strong fundamental understanding of the
software. A lot of it has built upon the skills we used at school, with a more
in-depth understanding of each of the tools and of the design intent (how to go
about building something).
I’ve also had the chance to start on my own personal project.
I’m designing and building a fixing for a bike that can hold a D-lock.
(Diagram showing the Lock holder in relation to the
handle bar. It will still need to be connected to it in some way)
(Animation
showing the motion required to fit a D-lock into the holder)
The D-lock slots into the holder and then rotates to fix it
in position (and is held in that position by gravity).
It is quite a complex design, due to the curved layout and
the twisting motion for locking, but using the interference tools in SOLIDWORKS
it is possible to test the validity of the design.
(Interference
detection for an earlier design)
Over the next week I plan to fully develop the design and
start printing prototypes on the 3D printer.
Jonathan Pawson