Wacky Racers

Initial Sketches

CAD Models

Initial Description

This product is called Wacky Racers and are customizable push carts where a kid can sit on it and power it with their legs. The physical concept that this is based off of is gravity and momentum. Children can interact with this toy in many ways. First they can customize their own toy with all the different add ons so that each kid can have a unique racer all to themselves. They can use them to race their friends, go down the driveway, or simply ride around. Construction costs would be low as the racers would be made out of all plastic as they are made for smaller children. The durability should be high as none of the pieces are small or easily breakable thus they should stand the test of time. Safety is basically up to how each child decides to use it. While thinking about children's toys I remembered my friends and I would race things similar to this product all the time. Each of us had our "go to" vehicle of choice and each was unique and random to the person. This was the concept that I tried to bring to this toy was a sense of uniqueness and belonging to the certain owner in that no one has the same one as you.

Manufacturing Plan

Ideal Plan: The body and attachable parts would be made with plastic moulding. First the body would be moulded then the slots would be cut out with a mill. The plastic shell might not be strong enough, so there may have to be supports inside as well. The attachable parts would also be made with plastic moulding that can be inserted into the various slots on the body. These would be held in place by velcro on both the part and the body near the slot. The wheels would then be attached on the base of the body.

Other options for prototype: Because making a full scale functioning plastic mould may prove to be difficult for our prototype we plan on making the body out of plywood which we can cut into the specific shape we want. In this case we would have to cut out slices from the plywood sheets and laminate those together. Another option is to make the body out of foam, and have it be a solid prototype. The attachable parts would be made of foam, most likely on a CNC router.

If we make the body out of plywood, and the attachable parts out of foam, we'd need sheets of plywood (at most two), wood glue, blocks of foam, and screws, wheels, and velcro strips.
We'd need to use a CNC router.

We machined the body of the prototype out of a block of wood using a CNC router, and 3d printed prototype add-ons, as well as found some caster wheels.