The Application of Advanced Product Development Techniques to a 1st Year Engineering Student Boat Design Project

The design and manufacture of a RC model boat is a component of the compulsory paper ENGG180 for first year engineering students at the University of Waikato. ENGG180 is a foundation of engineering paper which includes project-based learning, fundamental principles of engineering design and engineering analysis. The model boats made by undergraduate engineering students are rather primitive in design and use conventional manufacturing methods. The conventional methods used by students, to make the hulls are a very labour intense and inaccurate. In the present method there is no direct link between the CAD model and the manufactured hull due to the absence of computer-aided machining. However using conventional methods, students get more knowledge on how parts are manufactured. These conventional methods of fabrication are used because the primary emphasis for their project is experiencing the design process, working effectively in a team and working to constraints (such as time, money and materials). The current emphasis is not fabrication technologies. Students would gain more accurate impressions of design and fabrication if more up-to-date technologies were demonstrated. The purpose of this research is to teach students about the designs and features of a fast boat, modern manufacturing methodologies and rapid prototyping. The boat was designed in Solidworks, the hull mold was machined using a CNC milling machine directly from the CAD model. The many internal pats were produced with laser cutting machine from the CAD model. Thus the model boat was built accurately to the CAD model. These methods demonstrated have modern CAD and CAM techniques which could be successfully applied to the manufacture of model boat. It was found that the boat did not perform as expected this was due to problem with battery performance. It is therefore suggested that if further work be undertaken in this area more detailed modelling and simulation (CAE) of the boat system be carried out