This is a project I did with 6 other students in 2.008, the second Design and Manufacturing course at MIT. Check out our blog and our video for details on the manufacturing of the yoyo.

Here I present a description of what I did along with some pictures. Ultimately, the yoyo parts are made by injection molding and the milk-resembling stand by thermoforming. As a group, our task was to design a yoyo and produce at least 50 units, using mass manufacturing processes including thermoforming and injection molding.

 

After we decided to make an oreo design, I CADed the outside (cookie part) in SolidWorks by tracing a picture of an oreo I found online.

 

My teammates used the model to make the molds for injection molding using SolidWorks’ Mold Tools.

Then, I designed the stand to resemble the milk when the cookie is dipped in it. For this, I used AutoCAD because its mesh tools are ideal for this kind of shapes. Then I used MasterCAM to produce tool paths from the CAD model to make the mold to be used for thermoforming (note that the final version was scaled down from that shown in the renderings above). We used a CNC lathe and a CNC mill with these tool paths to produce the following mold.

 

Using this mold we produced all the stands by thermoforming and then punching.

  

Once all the parts were manufactured, their assembly took us about 1 hour.

 

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