SolidWorks was used to design a woodpecker puzzle toy that can be assembled and disassembled. The toy consists of multiple parts that fit together to form a complete structure.
Once assembled, the woodpecker can peck at the tree with a push of the top button.
Presice measurements and tolerances were applied to ennsure the mechanical function of the toy. The pecking mechanism involved a
careful balance between aesthetic design and physical simplicity, ensuring a smooth pecking action.
The goal of the project was to present elements in a 3D printed puzzle toy that are unique to Canada. The initial idea of a maple tree
was iterated on to include a moving animal too, which ended up beig a woodpecker that pecks at the tree.
Early iterations of the design still had unclear mechnisms as to how the woodpecker wuld both move and attach to the tree.
The final design involved a button pressing mechanism to move the woodpecker
The inner mechanism involves taking advantage of the centre of gravity of the woodpecker. In the resting state, the woodpecker tips backward per the first photo. After the button press, the woodpecker's centre of gravity create a moment (red) large enough to counteract the moment from pushing the stick down (blue). This restores the woodpecker to the resting position.
To ensure the centre of gravity remained behind the point where the woodpecker was rotating about, the tail was made hevaier than the rest of the bird by setting the infill to 100% and the rest of the body to 15%.
I worked with a team of 5 to produce this toy. In particular, I led the mechanical design of the toy, including the woodpecker's pecking mechanism. I designed the top tree leaves of the toy, and design the pins that held the toy together, ensuring that they were easy to assemble and disassemble.
The ION is a light rail train that runs from Waterloo to Kitchener Ontario. Every day I had classes just beside the Unversity of Waterloo station, where I would see and hear the train pass every 15 minutes. I designed a model of the train in SolidWorks, creating 3D parts and assemblies, 2D drawings, and BOMs.
The finished model is an assembly composed of 95 parts. The unique parts included the ends of the train, the middle carriages, the wheels, the axles, the connections between the carriages, and the seats. The features used included boss extrudes, extruded cuts, fillets, mirrors, and drawn patterns as seen in the logos on the train. The assembly was created by inserting the parts into the assembly and mating them together. The wheels are mated so that they are able to rotate, and the axles are mated so that they are able to slide in and out of the train.
