About

This is just a project to create the most optimal trucks. This project was more about the journey than the story. The objective was to develop a machinable aluminum truck for skateboards, but it was indeed an exercise in CAD, Generative Design, Structural Analysis, and Manufacturing.

CAD/Generative Design

Generative Design, even with manufacturing constraints, will produce parts that are now extraordinarily inefficient but possible to machine or designs that are not possible to manufacture. This is where I come in with and exercise organic 3D modeling to modify the part to make it machinable while still keeping the mechanical properties of the part.

The figure below shows the original part turned out from generative design.

Then I would modify to redesign it for manufacturing. A key feature of the reworked design is that all points of the part are reachable via along points.

Then we redo the structural analysis of the part.

Once the Structural analysis approves it in both dynamic and static events, we can proceed to manufacture.

Fabrication

We started with using GibbsCAM to create the tool path. We first roughed the whole part out of a 3 by 3 by 6-inch block of 6061 aluminum in less than 30 minutes. To achieve this, we took the full depth of cut with a 1/2 endmill. Then we did an advance pocketing to remove the steps of .0625inchs per pass to get the rough shape of the part. Finally, we took a .25 ball endmill with a step over of .0005inches, leaving a ridge height of 75 microns. The total machining time was 4 hours.

30 minutes for full roughing with stepover. 3.5 hours for the surfacing operation.