designing wheel for autoCAD class

Im currently designing a wheel for my AutoCAD class. Its going to be a mix of a fuel vector, method NV, and scs Ray10.


It’ll be 17x9, hubcentric, and -15 offset.

Also will have a heavy duty 3500 lb load rating.

What specs and designs would you guys want if you could create your own wheel?


Thinking of getting some made and selling for around 550 a set.

 

Easy to clean brake dust. You are on the right concept. Maybe a few less holes and some sort of slight beveling to give it a unique edge. A darker gun metal that isn’t all the way black

 

Thanks for the feedback. Do you mind going more into detail for the "slight beveling". Im not sure I understand what you mean. Do you have any examples of wheels that already have it?

 

It’s right where the holes would be cut out of the wheel. Instead of being sharp where the edge of the circle is, it would be gently beveled about 1/16-1/8”. It’s just a thought.

I hate cleaning my TRD Pro 4Runner wheels because it traps brake dust in all the knocks and crannies. An easy to clean, simple, yet light wheel design is what is truly needed

 

You're going to sell custom, aluminum, one-off wheels, likely CNC machined, for $137.50 a wheel.

What?

Dude, who's your aluminum supplier and machine shop. I got a few million dollars worth of orders I can probably send their way.

 

They are not going to be cnc cut. It’ll be made through a mold.

 

This right here. One off wheels for $550 a set? Wont matter how theyre made, it wont be anywhere near that low in cost.

 

Ive done some research. The mold will be about 8-10k, and production for each set is a couple hundred. Yes it will take months possibly year(s) for it to pay back. Im not in this for the money. I just want to provide a great looking wheel to the community that is actually affordable rather than paying for the “name” like fuel, method, etc.

 

You do you man.


Thats a metric crapload of money to spend in a college class tho haha.

 

So I may have been a bit harsh in my initial post, but I don't think you've thought this through.
You're making a product that comes with liability. To offset that liability properly, you have to ensure you make a safe, quality product. That means quality control, and a corporation for the liability umbrella. Next you toss in supply chain considerations (intake, distribution, production, finished goods receipt and inspection, and shipment), and now you're looking at storage space and potentially additional personnel. Next there's order administration,

Here's one small slice of that pie.
Have you thought about how the wheels will be packaged for shipment? Have you researched the costs of boxes, dunnage, and packaging? Have you considered the freight costs of shipping large, heavy parcels? How will you insure shipments against damage and loss?

If you're making some cool one off wheels for yourself, go for it man, but if you want to actually make and sell these, you're signing up for a lot of work, and a lot of upfront cost. All to sell at a loss?

As Blue92 said, you do you man.

 

I would only go through with this if I get pre orders based on the design. That money would go right to the cost of the mold.

 

Not trying to be a dick, so your taking other wheel designs that are already tried and trued from other big name brands and trying to make a "one off" or whatever, at half the cost?

 

Just curious how you would go about the mechanical design for such a thing so critical to safety while being subjected to various unforseen loading scenarios.

You may also want to get started early on investigating metalcasting failure modes and liability insurance.

 

Do you not see how similar each of those 3 designs are? Clearly they all copied each other in one way or another. It's little design tweaks in wheels that can really set them off from each other.

 

I will be running static and dynamic FEA on them. As well as getting them JWL tested.

 

Based on your reply, I’ll be in here to say yeah man start a rim company and make awesome products. Put together a plan and get some funding, maybe win a senior design competition. That is what engineering is all about. Nothing like better products by passionate designers. It will be a few years to get it together, but sign me up for a set when ready.

Check out the models COMSOL has posted for various analysis methods for automotive rims, starting with this one:
https://www.comsol.com/model/fatigue-analysis-of-a-wheel-rim-2038

 

Awesome idea.
Advice from my years of product design experience, gotta make sure manufactured product matches design. Things get adjusted on the fly sometimes in the shop if you don't have robust inspection requirements to catch it. Interpretation of design requirements must be clear up front.

 

Are you also using any generative design as part of the process? I was part of the simulation team at Autodesk (FEA, CFD, Moldflow and composites). There are some interesting tools to work with. Have you seen this?

https://youtu.be/A9QijpyDGic

 

Another innovation would be a unique coating that improves the ease of cleaning. Think of the analogy of the non stick pan. If a garden hose was strong enough to clean a rim then complex designs would be more accepted. Lots of ways to bring innovation....good luck

 

I prefer the optimization module in COMSOL for mechanical design based on user-defined target objective functions.