Fidget Spinners are all the rage, whether you love or don't care for them, they are here. A couple weeks ago at the Autodesk Lake Oswego Oregon office we held our annual Kids at Autodesk Day, where employees brought their children to work where we have several activities for them planned. One of those activities was designed and led by Garin Gardiner. Garin developed and led a class to walk the kids through the design of a fidget spinner and the machining of it in Fusion 360. This was the future of making the makers of the world type of class.
Here is Garin leading the teens. The kids had Fusion 360 running on a laptop and followed along step by step. For many this was their first ever exposure to design or Fusion 360. It was amazing to be a spectator in the class and hear the comments and questions.
Garin led them through developing the features with a sketch, patterning, and extruding.
The the cuts and insert of a purchased bearing and the pennies as weights. Here you can see the rendering in Fusion 360 making the part look real.
They then generated the machine paths and machined from blank stock material using a Othermill Pro. Why the subtractive rather than additive method? Machined spinner bodies are much better in the final results than most consumer 3D printers.
Here is what the machined blanks looked like.
You can view and download the source files (available in many formats) for the Fusion 360 Spinner project at: http://a360.co/2uGAAe0
Garin has a Future of Making Things track at Autodesk University 2017 where you design a speaker from beginning to end using Autodesk Fusion 360 including the circuitry using Autodesk Eagle. You get to take the cool working speaker home with you. Stay tuned for more details on this limited seating track at AU and a special offer in an upcoming blog post.
Cheers,
Shaan
