This document contains the information for the onboarding challenge for new members. By the end of the design challenge, we hope you will gain experience with CAD and Solidworks, put mechanical design into practice, and have a good time! Before you start you have to download or gain access to SolidWorks 2024, so please use the instructions on the SOLIDWORKS page and feel free to send a message on Slack if you need help. Also make sure that you have been added to the Fusion Team, where we share CAD files, by sending your U of T email to the Mechanical Lead.
CB-09: CAD Guidelines contains guidelines for mechanical design and CAD modelling, and the SOLIDWORKS page contains helpful resources to learn how to use SolidWorks.
Below is the CAD model for FINCH from Fall 2024. The satellite has a volume of about 10 x 10 x 30 cm, with an extra section on the top called the “Tuna Can”. The mechanical team is responsible for designing and testing the satellite structure; we ensure that all the components of the satellite fit well and that FINCH is able to withstand the launch environment.
The inside of FINCH! White labels are for other subsystems’ components, and orange labels are structures designed by Mechanical to hold FINCH together.
During Winter 2025, some major changes happened to the payload/structures design of FINCH, and we are currently in the process of redesigning FINCH structures to accommodate a bigger payload. It’s a great time to join the team and gain experience with the brainstorming/design/prototyping process!
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Feel free to go through the which contains some important components inside of FINCH! There will be a mech-specific page there soon..
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The mechanical team has a new task! We have been given an antenna (50 mm in diameter), and we have to mount it onto a panel (100 x 100 mm) which is already mounted somewhere in FINCH. Both of these parts are shown below, and we are not allowed to modify them.
Your task is to design a structure to securely mount the antenna onto the panel.
Note that the antenna has no holes, but the panel has three mounting holes. More information is found in the requirements section below!
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In SolidWorks, you will notice that the holes on the panel are called M3x0.5 tapped holes. Tapped holes are holes that are made to fit fasteners with threads (e.g. the ridges on screws). The size M3 means that the hole can fit a fastener with a thread diameter of 3mm, and the 0.5 represents a thread pitch (distance between threads) of 0.5 mm. M3 is a commonly used standard for fasteners in Cubesats!
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Antenna
Panel
You can download the SolidWorks part files for both parts by clicking on the links below: