Shopping Cart Design

Shopping Cart Design

This project involved the full-cycle development of a novel, open-source compliant shopping cart, initiated to explore advanced applications of mechanical design, analysis, and fabrication. The core objective was to apply modern engineering methods to create a robust and functional solution suitable for public use, while maintaining detailed documentation for community replication.

The engineering process focused heavily on ensuring structural integrity and user safety:

• Design & Modeling: Used SolidWorks for all conceptualization and detailed CAD modeling, producing a full set of part and assembly drawings, complete with a Bill of Materials (BOM) and GD&T.

• Structural Analysis: Established critical load cases, including design for strength, stiffness, and abuse cases. Both engineering hand calculations and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) were performed to justify safety factors and analyze areas of peak stress and deflection.
  

• Physical Validation: Developed and executed a rigorous testing plan that involved component prototyping and measuring deflection at critical points on the final design. Results were compared directly against FEA predictions to validate the accuracy of the computational models.

• Open-Source Deliverables: The final deliverable was a comprehensive design package and a report written for an open-source design forum, detailing the full process, analysis results, and assembly recommendations for easy replication by other designers.

This project provided hands-on experience in managing a complete mechanical system from initial concept through physical validation.