Guide to Making Attachments in Tinkercad
Designing 3D printed attachments for the Micromelon rover is a fantastic way to upskill in CAD design while making your own custom additions. Tinkercad is a free-to-use software that allows you to bend and stretch existing shapes to create your own ones. In this guide, we’ll be going through some of the basic Tinkercad tools and how we would go about designing a sumo ramp for the rover.
The Workspace:
When a new project is opened in Tinkercad, the following screen is what we see. Highlighted by coloured squares are some important tools to get started.
Red - This is the part name, simply click the word and type in your part name.
Orange - There is where some of your keyboard tools are, such as ‘delete’, ‘copy’, ‘paste’, merge, etc.
Yellow - This is the navigation tube, it can be clicked an dragged around to look at the part in 3D. Faces on this cube can be clicked to look at the front, top, and other faces. The cube can also be used to rotate your view of the part.
Green - This is where all of the starting shapes are, click and drag any of these onto the workplane to start modelling.
The Measure Tool:
The measure tool is like a special ruler that lets us see how long an object is on all sides. It also tells us the distance of the object to the ruler using green arrows. As seen in the video, we can click these numbers and change them to modify the shape. The video uses a cube but any of the shapes on the right can be used. It’s recommended to always have a ruler in the workplane for any project.
Holes and Solids:
The two types of objects in Tinkercad are ‘Solids’ and ‘Holes’. As seen in the video, when two solids are grouped together, they become one solid object. But when a solid and a hole are grouped, where the hole overlaps the solid, the solid is cut off. This process can be reversed by ungrouping the objects again.
Align Tool:
The align tool is useful for quickly making a number of objects sit on the same line. This tool can’t be used to evenly distribute objects, however, for example, it’s very useful in making sure all your objects are sitting on the centre line of another object.
Designing a Rover Ramp:
Step 1:
To get started, first download our rover shell clip here. Next, open up the downloaded file in a new Tinkercad project by using Import > Choose a File > (open the file) > Import. Drop a ruler into the workplane and rotate the clip so that it looks like the image below:
Step 2:
Next, use a rectangle to cut off the bolt tabs at the front. The hole should look like the following image before grouping.
Step 3:
Next, we need to make the weapon for our attachment. For this, we used a wedge and modified the shape so it serves as a sumo ramp. It’s not attached to the clip just yet.
Step 4:
Next, we need to attach the ramp to the attachment clip. Move the ramp in so that it’s overlapping with the clip. Make sure it doesn’t come too far in as the rover needs to sit inside the clip. Use the align tool to make sure the ramp is centred on the clip. Don’t worry about the ultrasonic sensor opening, we’ll take care of this in the next step. Group the objects together once everything is in place.
Step 5:
Finally, we need to cut a hole so that the rover ultrasonic sensor can see through the ramp. Download the Ultrasonic Bore, and import it into the workplane. Next, position the bore as a hole so that it can cut through the hole on the clip and into the wedge. It’s easier to look from the back of the clip. The align tool and looking from many directions can help a lot with this step. Once everything is in position, merge the objects so the hole cuts through.
Complete:
Now that is the complete design on how to make a very basic attachment for the rover. Try experimenting with more complex shapes using a combination of solids. Maybe try to increase the amount of contact your shapes have with the rover clip to make a stronger bond.
