No assembly required wind-up toy car

[MrSirLRD]

This working prototype is the result of lots of hard work, a few print iterations, a TON of design iterations and a bit of dumb luck (in the form of a few lucky guesses)
Link to Car
I was very excited pulling this little toy car out of the box when it finally arrived and have been quite surprised by its performance after only a few actual prints of the whole wind-up gear box system! (I was surprised it moved at all)

At this point in time the car only moves about 50cm once fully wound up but i hope to increase this distance in the future!

This Wind-up toy car is printed in one piece by using Shapeways SLS nylon printer and comes with it's own key.
It can be wound up with the key, or by simply pulling the car back.

The wind up car at the moment is available in Beta as i'm trying to work out a few kinks
(the main one being the fact that the car required quite a bit of manual cleaning to get the parts moving)

Through the Beta processes i'm looking for any suggestions to improve this design!
(I have already uploaded an update that improves some aspects)


Take a look at the pics and video!

[soofle616]

Nice work. Without spending too much time looking at the design the very first thing that I see that's severely limiting the travel distance is the direct connection between the wheels/axle/power unit. Obviously you need the power to be applied to the axle to make it go forward but if you can find a creative way to allow the axle to decouple from the spring/gears/etc. once the spring has run out the car can freewheel and travel much farther on the momentum it already has. Perhaps some sort of ratchet device?

[MrSirLRD]

There is a mechanism in the front wheels that is supposed to allow the wheels to free roll once the spring has unwound but unfortunately at this stage it doesn't work, but yes once I get that working it should increase the distance it can travel!

[soofle616]

What program did you design it with? I'm actually quite interested in the mechanism and would be happy to lend an extra set of eyes and brain cells if you want to send me the files.

[MrSirLRD]

I should be able to get it working with a bit of fine tuning, the mechanism is similar to a ratchet device I just have the task of getting it working in the chosen material, But thank you for the offer!