Prototyping With Recycled Materials

So how to you get to a laptop built into a custom case for an arcade game system? Prototyping. At Makersmiths in Leesburg, VA, I teach about the benefits of prototyping. Most of this is done on the laser cutter, but I'll tell you later how I stepped up my game with Tinkercad and a 3D printer.

I don't have a picture of it, but the main supplies are LARGE sheets of cardboard. And the cost? FREE. Just walk into your local Costco, BJ's, Sam's or other wholesale club grab the big orange flatbed carts and go to the Paper Towels, Toilet Paper and Wine (yes). The products come in on pallets and they generally just set the pallet in place in the aisle. In between each each of the layers of products are slip sheets. When there are only a couple products left in that layer, it's very easy to pull out the slip sheets. In some cases these are just thick paper which can be useful. In other cases they are varying thicknesses of cardboard. And guess what, if you go in the back and ask someone, they'll usually give you a stack of it and you can just walk out with it. FREE. Why? because otherwise they have to toss it in their cardboard crusher and pay to dispose of it. They will probably thank you as you leave for taking away their trash.

So what did we get, a pile of 46"x46" (varies) nice, flat cardboard.

Oh, the wine. The wine is on significantly heavier cardboard. If you can find a helpful employee to get you some of those, they are good for simulating thicker materials. Some of the cardboard can get close to 1/2" thick.

Now we can use this to lasercut prototypes of our design. I tell my students that this is the place to make mistakes.

Lasercutting cardboard is fast, the material is light, you can just tape it together, or glue it, and you can make a bunch of versions because all it costs is your time to cut up another set.

Oh, and when your glue gun leaks.

1. Find a model on Thingiverse
2. Print it on your 3D printer and freak out just a bit as you run out of filament and quickly switch to another color without missing a beat
3. Realize that they made it too short and it drips right at the edge of the tray
4. Pull the model into Tinkercad
5. Chop it up and modify it https://www.tinkercad.com/things/fIjIDjBPCas-glue-gun-stand
6. Print it again.
7. Make sure to upload it to Thingiverse as a Remix so you give the original designer credit.

Note above that we have an Arcade control Panel and in the previous step a side wall. For this project, there were several factors to take into account. The laptop screen had to be held in place, so there are two rows of slots needed for the front frame, and a supporting rail behind the screen. Those were not in the original plans. It took two iterations to get the spacing correct.

For the control panels, we needed the buttons to be above where the keyboard would be (down at an angle), but the buttons couldn't hit the keyboard. We were able to cut a couple different designs, mount the buttons in the panel and see how they would interact with the keyboard.

In this picture, you can see that the panel doesn't go all the way to the top. Somewhere in the design where I was changing measurements, I didn't add something in. The prototype showed me where a mistake was. Instead of costing me a whole piece of plywood, it was just some free cardboard.

It's also good to find problems in your process. When the students went to cut the file we realized that the laser was taking a different point as the origin and the whole design was off to the right of the material.

I had them make notes in their journals about checking the origin point and using the frame function to check the cut area.

And so now, you can cut the final materials. Check your fit (which should be perfect).

I teach many people a month about the joys, benefits, and ecological impact of prototyping with cardboard.

Don't forget to recycle your prototypes after you are done.

Taping and gluing the cardboard together works for many prototypes. But a student needed something that was a bit more sturdy to be able to test the fit of a monitor. So we created a quick wedge in Tinkercad https://www.tinkercad.com/things/1GbyG2sf8jl-prototype-brackets and printed batches of 6 at a time to use as brackets between pieces of cardboard.

We had the Ender 3 v2 at Makersmiths going full time for half a day to get a bunch of them printed. Hot glue ot wood glue work depending on your adjustment vs set time. Hot glue is going to be pretty unforgiving, but you don't have to clamp it and sit there for a while.