Makercoin

The Objective: 

The aim of this project was to create my own makercoin. I had multiple constraints: 

• The design needed to be 6 cm in diameter and 1.25 cm thick. 
• Be “gear-esque,” and have no moving parts. 
• Require no supports and must slope downwards towards the center, similar to the photo as seen below: 

The Design Process: 

I began by looking at other designs and decided what I liked and didn’t like about them. I came up with a few ideas: 

• I liked simplicity and did not want my design to be too busy 
• I also liked the thin lines that are cut into the design 

I made all my sketches to scale. 

I started by designing the side view. I knew I only had to draw out one half of the side view because it would revolve around the axis to create the full circle, similar to the diagram above. 

I then created the top view, where I needed to decide what design I wanted. I thought about what I could put on the design that would be meaningful to me and would stand out. I decided to make my makercoin music themed. 

Since I liked the simplicity of lines cut into the design, I added one going around the outside of the design similar to a frame. I added 3 more lines of the same thickness to represent sheet music. Because of the small size, I decided to only add one music note and extrude it out. And for the “gear-esque” part of the design, I added 8 cuts into the outside of the circular shape. 

When making the design in Solidworks, I was easily able to revolve my initial sketch to make the overall shape, then add cuts into it to add the lines. 

The most difficult part was creating the music note. I had to decide the exact shape of the music note and define it. It took multiple tries but I was able to get a design I was happy with. 

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After extruding the music note, I added filets to round out the edges of the music note.

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Then I added the cutouts around the outside to create the gear shape. 

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I decided that I preferred the look of having less grooves for the gears, so I changed the design to have 5 cuts. 

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After adding these filets, I added a few more filets to round out the edges of the extruded cuts and the top of the music note. 

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Then, I made the top of the music note curved to mimic the curve of the body of the makercoin instead of leaving it extruded straight up. 

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Lastly, I added a few more filets to the music note and the cut around the outside of the design. 

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