Getting Started - Simple Experiments

The following information is a single lesson in a larger Tinkercad project. Check out this and more projects on Tinkercad.

Project Overview:

These easy, step-by-step Tinkercad lessons will guide you through the process of designing your own awesome hockey puck; designs that push performance and style to the limits!

This lesson has two objectives: Use the scientific process to increase the performance of the regulation hockey puck. Take artistic license of your design by adding graphics to your puck.

We will be pushing your knowledge of Tinkercad to new limits, so we recommend that you get a head start with the Let's Learn Tinkercad Project!

Now that you've taken 'Let's Learn Tinkercad', it's time to use this powerful tool to engineer your experimental pucks!

First, we will create a regulation hockey puck, and then experiment with ways to improve it!

Let's get started!

Instructions

1. Continue to the next step.

A standard National Hockey League (NHL) hockey puck is a flat, black cylinder made of vulcanized rubber that is 3" inches in diameter and 1" inch thick.

Tinkercad can operate in inches, but so we don't have to work with messy fractions, let's convert to millimeters (mm). One inch is roughly 25mm, so the diameter will be roughly 75mm.

Instructions

1. Continue to the next step.

Let's quickly make a regulation puck, this will be our control.

If we are going to experiment with improving the regulation sized hockey puck, we need to make a regulation hockey puck to compare your new, awesome puck design against.

When conducting an experiment, it is important to define the normal condition so you have something to compare the results of your changes against. This "normal" is called the 'Control'.

Instructions

1. Drag out a cylinder and scale it to 75mm in diameter and 25mm along the Z axis.
2. Continue to the next step.

Now that you have designed a regulation sized puck, we can use this as the 'Control' for our experiment.

Copy and paste your control.

Voila! You now will have a copy of your control puck that you can change. Let's get on with the experiment!

Instructions

1. Copy and Paste your Puck
2. Continue to the next step.

Take your copy and consider how you want to change it. Do you want to scale the object proportionally, or do you want to scale it along one axis?

Scaling the object proportionally will only affect the mass and volume of the object, but not the shape. In this way, you can see if changing the size, alone, is enough to dramatically affect performance.

Changing the proportions will have a more dramatic effect. When the shape of the puck changes, aspects like balances and stability will come into play.

What are other aspects we can change? What about changing the original shape?

Instructions

1. Change the volume of your puck by scaling it proportionally or keep the volume the same and change the proportions
2. Continue to the next step.

We've been working with a Cylinder for this entire lesson. However, we shouldn't let the shape limit us. What about other shapes?

Let's model this!

Go to the Shapes menu, look for the sub-menu Shape Generators. Underneath that, you'll find the Tinkercad Shape Generators.

We want the Polygon shape generator!

Drag one of those out and let's take a look at our this Shape Generator!

Instructions

1. Drag out the Polygon Shape Generator.
2. Continue to the next step

You'll notice that this Shape Generator has a number of variables, or changeable options. We have number of sides, we have radius, and we have height!

There are a number of variables in the generator that affect size. If you wanted to be ultra-precise, you could use those values, but we can actually ignore them and adjust the puck's size by scaling in Tinkercad.

So let's get to it!

Instructions

1. Continue to the next step.

For the polygonal puck, there are only two things we need to set.

When you resize your polygonal puck, the values X and Y may be different. Just make sure you hold Shift and your proportions will be correct.

Instructions

1. Set the number of sides you desire for your polygonal puck and uncheck the 'Pointed' check box.
2. Proportional Scale your puck to roughly 75mm in diameter.
3. Scale the puck to be 25mm thick along the Z Axis
4. Continue to the next step.

Now we have three pucks to test!

In the upper left hand corner, we have our Control Puck.

On the far right, we have our Scaled Puck.

On the bottom, we have our Polygon Puck.

Let the tests begin!

Instructions

1. Set the number of sides you desire for your polygonal puck and uncheck the 'Pointed' check box.
2. Proportional Scale your puck to roughly 75mm in diameter.
3. Scale the puck to be 25mm thick along the Z Axis
4. Continue to the next step.

In the next lesson you will learn to make fillets!

Next Lesson: Filleting - Taking the Edge Off