Manufactured Mold: Thermoform

We made our first mold in lab today, using the CNC lathe, mill, drill press, arbor press, and reamer!

The thermoform part only involves one mold, shown below:

The top of our thermoform piece mold, with the dome structure that will form our clear plastic yoyo cover.

The bottom of our thermoform piece mold, with the pin holes at the north and south axes.
The vacuum holes are visible right next to the inner ledge.

We used the lathe to turn the dome shape and ledges, while we used the mill, drill press, and reamer to create the two pin holes. Another drill press was used to create eight tiny vacuum holes, while an arbor press pushed the pins into the mold.

A tiny drill was used to create the vacuum holes.

The arbor press right before we pushed the pins down into the mold.

We also scheduled time to do a couple of test runs -- we made five test covers in all:

The top face of our very first thermoformed part.

The bottom face of the yoyo cover.

As expected, our first run didn't result in perfect yoyo covers off the bat. The texture was speckled (dust!!!), and there was some webbing near the pins.

Thus, for the subsequent runs, we pushed the pins down more to decrease webbing, cleaned the mold and plastic extra well to decrease chances of catching dust, and altered some parameters such as heating time.

Next week, we plan to manufacture the rest of our yoyo part molds, and start injection molding!

Preliminary Mold Design: Retaining Ring

This week, we've been finishing up designing our yoyo part molds in preparation for our first test run! We have one mold for the thermoformed clear plastic cover, and two each (a cavity and core) for the yoyo body, retaining ring, lettering, gold board, and entire wheel of fortune board.

One of the molds ready for its first run is the retaining ring:

Both the core (bottom) and cavity (top) molds.

The core mold features a filleted pocket around the boss extrude.

The cavity mold is stepped for the ring's ledges.

This part sits on top of the first ledge of the yoyo body, keeping the thermoformed cover in place, which will itself sit on the second ledge of the yoyo body.

The mold was created in SolidWorks using its Mold Design tools. The parting line was chosen in the middle of the ring's larger diameter to facilitate easy removal, and a shut-off surface was created at the bottom of the ring's smaller diameter.

A view of the parting line feature in SolidWorks. The body shown is our retaining ring.

The part was scaled by 1.02 based on shrinkage calculations from previous production runs of a similar retaining ring in past classes. The average outer ring diameter size was 1.9415" for this past ring, while the mold diameter itself was 1.98."

The retaining ring cavity mold we based our shrinkage calculations on.

The mold drawing was then transferred to Mastercam to add the runner and ejector pin hole placements:

CNC Lathe Mastercam for the cavity mold.

CNC Lathe Mastercam for the core mold.

ProtoTRAK Mill Mastercam for the core mold.

Since our retaining ring includes fillets which we didn't want the ejector pins to dent when removing our part, we decided to place the ejector pin holes outside of the part and create runners to the ring. (We had to use the largest radius ejector pin holes available since our yoyo body was already at the maximum size of 2.5" in diameter.)

In addition, we decided to place the ejector pin holes on the mold core instead of the cavity (where they typically are) to work around the fillet issue.

To manufacture these molds, we plan to first use the CNC Lathe, then the ProtoTRAK Mill. We chose the tools that would fit and provide the best finishes:

Retaining Ring Core:

Step	Operation	Machine	Tool	Justification
1	Rough Cut	Lathe	T0303	Used Tool 3 because we wanted to cut the outside diameter.
2	Finish Cut	Lathe	T0303	Used Tool 3 to finish to keep it consistent with the rough cut.
3	Groove	Lathe	T0909	Chose Tool 9 as a trepanning tool in order to cut a groove.
4	Center Drill	Mill	3/16” Center Drill (#2)	Chose the only appropriate tool to center drill the ejector pin holes first.
5	Peck Drill	Mill	0.120” Drill (#31)	Chose the only appropriate tool to create the ejector pin holes.
6	Contour	Mill	⅛” Ball End Mill	Chose a ball end mill tool to make one of the runners from the ejector pin holes.
7	Contour	Mill	⅛” Ball End Mill	Chose the same ball end mill tool to make the sprue runner and the other ejector pin runner.

Retaining Ring Cavity:

Step	Operation	Machine	Tool	Justification
1	Rough Cut	Lathe	T1010	Chose Tool 10 because we needed to bore out the cavity.
2	Finish Cut	Lathe	T505	Chose Tool 5 to finish because it has a smaller radius.

Here's to hoping for a successful first test run!

Yo-Yo Design!

Yo-Yo Design:
We designed our yo-yo around the Wheel of Fortune - hence our team name! Here are a few pictures of our yo-yo

Back Face of the Yo-yo has the name of our yo-yo, in the letter format of its namesake gameshow

Side View

Front Face of Yo-yo contains a spinning disk that will look like the Wheel.
The image of the wheel will be printed on a sticker

Exploded View

Looking at the exploded view of our yo-yo above, we can explain all the parts. Starting from the top piece:
1. Retaining Ring (Injection Mold) - This piece is press-fit into the yo-yo body and keeps the thermoformed cover in place.

Retaining Ring, Pressfit into yo-yo body

2. Yo-yo Cover (Thermoform) - This piece is thermoformed, cut on a die, and placed on a ledge on the yo-yo body.
3. Press Ring (Lasercut) - The press ring sits on the spin-stick, and it keeps the wheel of fortune from popping off. It is press fit on top of the spin stick. The picture below shows the spin stick and press ring. The wheel of fortune would go in the space in between to spin.

Picture of Spin Stick and Press Ring

4. Wheel of Fortune (Lasercut) - The wheel of fortune spins between the spin stick and press ring. The wheel consists of a lasercut disk, on which a sticker of the wheel of fortune is placed.
5. Spin Stick (Injection Mold) - picture below. This piece is injection molded, The spin stick is pres fit into the yo-yo body.

Spin Stick

6. Yo-Yo Body (Injection Mold) - the body contains a place for press-fitting the spin stick and a ledge for press-fitting the back piece and the Retaining Ring.

Yo-yo Body

7. Attachment between Yo-yo- bodies : This consists of the screw that wholes the two body pieces together
8. Yo-Yo Body (Injection Mold) - 2nd piece
9. Back Piece (Injection Mold + Overmolding) - This piece is overmolded, featuring different colors to write out the words "Wheel of Fortune"
10. Yo-yo Cover (Thermoform) - 2nd piece
11. Retaining Ring (Injection Mold) - 2nd piece

We incorporated principles of design for manufacturing into the features of the parts:

• In the CAD model of the injection molded pieces, we put fillets on the sharp edges, to make sure that the part slides out easier
• We put draft angles of 1 degree on the sides of the yo-yo body to ensure that the injection molded part doesn't get stick
• We incorporated press-fits into our design and ensured that only the sides of those press-fitted pieces were 90 degrees

Table of Specs: A table of specifications for the Yo-yo design was made, with critical dimensions of the components and assembly. It can be found here.

Gantt Chart: We also created a Gantt Chart to  schedule the design and manufacturing of our yoyo. You can see the chart here.

Team Introduction!

2.008 Design and Manufacturing II's overall goal is for us to become "expert thinkers in manufacturing." As part of that goal we will design and manufacture 50 yo-yos. Our team has chosen a Wheel Of Fortune theme to our yo-yo. 

Meet Our Team:

Melody Liu 

Junior in Mechanical Engineering
MechE Interest:  Mechanical Design and Product Design
Other Interests: I enjoy cooking, running around boston, and baking.

Kath Xu 

Junior in Mechanical Engineering 

MechE Interest:  3D printing and product design

Other Interests: Writing for The Tech, sailing, reading.

Alexxis Isaac

Senior in Mechanical Engineering 

MechE Interest: Manufacturing and Project Management. 

Other Interests: I enjoy sports and am a member of the Varsity Women's Basketball team here at MIT. Otherwise I enjoy watching movies and listening to music with my friends :)

Melanie Alba

Senior in Mechanical Engineering

MechE Interest: Robotics and STEM Education

Other Interests: I enjoy salsa dancing, movies, food, and friends. I also am interested in improving STEM education in K-12.

Skyler Adams

Junior in Mechanical Engineering

MechE Interests: His interests are automation, personal fabrication and robotics. He works at the Center for Computational Fabrication in CSAIL.