Making and testing is an integral part of any Design School, hence we at NMIMS, School of Design start our day by not only brain storming but also by working on hands on projects in groups. Last week we built a cardboard car. The car building ended with an exciting car race and loads of learning about the movement of car. We started the building by sketching various shapes and forms for our car design. We were asked to continue sketching until and unless we were satisfied. We learnt that design was all about choice. It was all about our choice to put in more efforts.

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Finally, after sketching various shapes and forms for the car, we started working on surface development. We took measurements of all the surface of the car and made mock-up of the body of our car. The picture below is the stencil of the mock-up made by us.

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Once we were done with the paper mock-up, we made the same stencil in Adobe Illustrator, and got the the stencil laser printed on the cardboard. Along with the body, we even made the chassis and wheels in the illustrator. We made the body from the cardboard and pasted the various sides with glue gun. Four cardboard pieces were attached to the chassis of the car and holes were made in the centre of these pieces in order to pass the axel of the wheels through them. The holes were made we drill by choosing a correct size of the drill bit. This marked the end of the surface development of the car.

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After surface development it was time to make the wheels. Sixteen cardboard wheels were laser printed as we stuck four cardboard wheels together to make one big wheel. Before sticking the four cardboard wheels together we made holes in the centre of the wheels for skewer, which was the axel around which the wheels would rotate.

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Initially, we cut straw into small pieces and inserted them not only between but also on the either sides of cardboard pieces. The skewers were inserted between the straw pieces. We did our first trial and noticed that skewers’ movement was restricted as it collided with the cardboard piece attached to the chassis. It is seen in the video given below that the car covers a very small distance after being launched from the inclined plane.

After our realisation we replaced the straw pieces with a whole straw and hence we had to drill bigger holes of the size of the straw in the cardboard piece. The image given below shows the attachment of skewers, straws and the wheels. Masking tape was used on either ends so that the wheels do not come off while being rotated.

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Now the car was ready for a rigorous trial and error session. We launched our car from different heights of the inclined plane and made hundreds of small changes, making our car a bit more efficient. All the changes were followed by observations and conclusions which eventually became a major part of our learning. We thrice changed the diameter of the wheels (every time increased the size), we increased the distance between the two pairs of wheels, we increased the distance between two wheels on the same axel, we added weight by putting some clay.

At last we coloured the car with alcohol markers and named it KTM 990 (Note that 990 was the LCM of our roll Numbers :p)

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KTM 990 was ready to compete with other cars. The car race was definitely loaded with fun, frolic and laughter. KTM 990 secured 3rd position but as it is said, “It’s not the destination that matters but the journey”; we learnt many things while building this car. The race was followed by a submission of an analysis which stated various factors on which the distance covered by the car depends on. Following are those factors:

  1. Diameter of the wheels of the car.
  2. Distance between two pair of the wheels.
  3. Distance between two wheels on the same axel.
  4. Height of the body of the car.

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