Paper RC Car

This project is another one that lands more towards fun than technical. One of my design classes called "Form and Structure" was focused on rapid prototyping with basic construction methods like 3D printing and laser cutting. The assignments were often very open ended, so I took the opportunity to make a remote control truck for one of them.

I tried to challenge myself to make the construction as simple and low-cost as possible. This was not an engineering class, so I wanted to stay true to the curriculum as much as possible while still getting to mess around with some servos.

As usual I started with some basic sketches.

From there I designed the chassis and body in SolidWorks, formatting them to be cut from flat stock of MDF and paper respectively.

The body was folded and glued from a single sheet.

To avoid a lengthy shopping list, all of the electrical components were sourced from my graveyard of old remote control planes. This posed some challenges like a very high rpm, but very low torque motor. I addressed this with a 2-stage pulley reduction, with 3D printed wheels, and elastic band belts.

The mechanical functionality of the final product was pretty satisfying for a couple weeks of class and some glued together MDF, and it's always a nice change of pace to get to work on something where a primary design requirement is just looking neat.