Sales Orbital Fidget Goodie

Summary Section:

As a cool little goodie for customers during a sales meeting, we present this little 3D-printed compass which is 0.5cm thick and 6cm long in diameter. I created this little compass to help aid the sales of my company ENcompass CRM but you can add your logo and motto to it if you’d like. This little fidget will certainly impress and attract any potential customer you hope to acquire. Note: this is not a guarantee that you will make an immediate sale, but at least the fidget will keep your company's name in the front of their mind and the potential customer can walk away grateful they’ve been gifted a super cool compass fidget. Along the way of making this cool item, I received help from my partner. Make sure to check their page out here! Link

Lesson Plan and Activity

Using sketch offsets and drafted extrusions/cuts, you will create a telescoping fidget device. You and your partner will be “accountabillibuddies.” This means you will provide feedback on initial designs and plans, help each other solve problems, and troubleshoot errors as they occur. You are NOT REQUIRED to have identical designs, but having them will certainly make the process easier.

Assembly/Construction Instructions Section (if needed):

• 1. Sketch a circle(4.5cm diameter) on the front plane.
• 2. Extrude it by 0.5cm.
• 3. Create 2 outer rings(5cm and 6cm).

• 4. Cut the outer ring in the middle.

• 5. Create planes perpendicular to the rings.

• 6. On the planes that are opposite and touching outer rings, extrude cut a circle of 0.3cm diameter, 0.3cm into the outer ring.
• 7. Fillet the circle by 0.2cm.
• 8. On planes touching the inner circle, extrude a circular sketch that drafts inward by an angle of 11, 0.05cm into the grooves of the extruded cut you previously made.

• 9. Now, sketch any design you want on the surface of the inner circle but make sure it’ll be able to be cut extruded(Make sure you don’t run into the “Zero-Thickness” error).

• 10. Cut extrude the parts of the sketch that you would like to be engraved by 0.2cm.

• 11. Optional: in the cuts you’ve made, you can make a piece to fill the gap but in a different color if you’d like certain parts of your design to contrast. Follow these steps:
  • Create another sketch on the plane that your design is on and click convert identities. 
  • - Then, select the pieces that you’ve engraved and want to fill and hit the green check
  • - Now click offset entities and fill the measurement box with 0.01 cm. Hit the green check.
  • - Extrude the offset of the part and make sure it is “Up to surface” with the “Surface” being the face of the original extruded circle.
  • - Make sure you unselect the “Merge bodies” option.
  •  - You should end up with pieces like these that can be inserted

• 12. You can repeat this step on the back if you’d like or you can try adding text using the Solidworks text tool

• All done and ready to print!

Design Choices: 

• The 4 inner kite shapes were loose in their cut and they came out occasionally. To fix this, we will make the offset in step 11, 0.005cm for the start.

• The size of the print was larger than expected and we should've sketched the initial sketch to be slightly smaller. Although it works well as a coaster, it isn't currently suitable for its purpose as a small token. We need to decrease the outer circle radius by 2cm. 

• The circular cut extrudes into the outer room in step 6 is a little too large and needs to be smaller by 0.1cm because there is too much wiggle room for the axle.

• A big regret in my design choice is that the “EN” and the text in the back are not in different colors like it would've been if we followed step 11.

Thanks for following along and have fun with your print!!