On Wednesday, Sept. 30, six groups of second-year Mechanical Design students presented their custom-designed weed whip projects and demonstrated their prototypes on Dunwoody’s lawn. Instructor Alex Wong gave each group the motor and wiring from a standard Black and Decker weed whip, a budget of $200, and about five weeks to make design improvements on the store-bought Black and Decker weed whip model.
“In addition to the professional skills required for the 3D modeling and documentation, the students also had to do a lot of problem-solving,” Alex said. The students were required to do research and develop sketches of their own weed whip concept. When this initial design process was complete, students brought their sketches to life using parts they made with the Stratasys 3D printers in the College’s Metrology Lab.
Mac Cameron – an Applications Engineer at Stratasys – came to watch the demonstrations of the students’ projects. “I travel all over the place to see what people are doing with our printers,” he said, “but this is one of the cooler projects I’ve seen on a college campus.”
In addition to the project guidelines, Alex also graded students on criteria like teamwork, decision-making skills, and quality of the documentation.
Click here for more information on the Engineering Drafting & Design program.