Product Design

Product Design is an elective engineering course for SEA seniors. It is an extension of Engineering Design, continuing to develop and extend students' engineering skills into the area of product development, from brainstorming product ideas to producing a working prototype. 

Unit 1: Manufacturing

In this unit students expand their skills in 3D modeling using Onshape by learning techniques for designing products that will be manufactured on a laser cutter and/or 3D printer.  They apply their new skills by designing items of their own creation and prototyping them on our class laser cutter and 3D printers.

Unit 2: Arduino Electronics

In this unit students learn how to create circuits with Arduinos and a variety of inputs and outputs including buttons, lights, buzzers, sensors, motors, and displays.  And they learn how to code the Arduino to interact with these inputs and outputs to perform specific tasks.  

Unit 3: Electronic Product 

In this unit students use the skills learned in the two previous units to produce a new household product that uses the Arduino and its inputs and outputs in a new, useful way.  They brainstorm ideas, evaluate and choose the best idea, design it in Onshape, create the prototype on the laser cutter and/or 3D printer, incorporate the electronics, and test their prototype.

Unit 4: Internet-of-Things Product

In this unit students switch from the Arduino to the Particle Argon - a device that functions like an Arduino but has built-in networking capabilities.  They learn how to use the Argon with Node Red to create devices that can interact over the Internet - the can send data to a web page, or send a text to a phone, or be controlled from a web page. Students then design a new Internet-of-Things device that makes use of these capabilities, and they design and prototype it like they did for the Electronic Product.