Mechanical concepts

✅ Why this step builds design confidence before CAD

Good ideas don’t just look good—they work well too.

Mechanical concepts help you explore how your product might function physically. This stage is where core mechanical ideas—movement, joining, load paths, tolerances—are tested and compared. It gives your team a chance to experiment, challenge assumptions, and build confidence before committing to a full design.

It’s where feasibility starts to take shape.

📘 What you’ll learn

  • How different mechanical systems or structures might work
  • What trade-offs exist between simplicity, performance, and manufacturability
  • How to spot risks early (e.g. alignment, stress, failure points)
  • Which options are worth developing further

🛠️ Tools and methods

  • Mechanical Sketchboards

    Rough layouts of joints, pivots, latches, linkages, frames.

  • Exploded Concepts

    Break ideas into parts—how do they come together and stay together?

  • Functional Flow Diagrams

    Show the order of operations (e.g. rotate → latch → deploy).

  • Force Mapping

    Identify where stress, movement, or load will occur.

  • Peer Review Grid

    Score mechanical ideas by robustness, simplicity, risk, cost.

⚠️ Common pitfalls

  • Jumping into CAD too soon. Paper or whiteboard is faster for thinking.
  • Ignoring fit and tolerance. What seems simple may not assemble in practice.
  • Overlooking user effort. Can the mechanism be used one-handed? By all user types?
  • Designing in isolation. Include perspectives from prototyping, materials, and assembly.

💡 Voices from the workshop

“We sketched six hinge concepts before prototyping. One was ruled out for safety, one was too hard to assemble, and the third… became the product.”

– Senior Mech Design Engineer, Assistive Tech

💡 You don’t need final geometry—just enough clarity to show how it works and what makes it viable.

🔗 Helpful links & resources

✍️ Quick self-check

  • Have we sketched at least two working mechanical ideas?
  • Do we understand how parts move, join, or flex?
  • Have we identified any likely stress or failure points?
  • Are these ideas ready for prototyping or CAD exploration?

🎨 Visual concept (optional)

Illustration: A whiteboard showing exploded mechanical concept drawings (e.g. latch, pivot, gear train), with callouts like “hinge axis”, “load-bearing”, “spring-loaded”. One person is adding a score tag: “Simplicity: 9”, while another sketches an alternative latch.

Visual shows how rough mechanical ideation helps technical teams evaluate what will work—before they build or model it.
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