Freelance 3D design through the pandemic

dquads.com · Bucharest, Romania · 2020

In January 2020 I started working as a freelance mechanical design engineer. Two months later the world closed. Factories stopped, but companies that still needed parts designed needed someone who could do it from home. So I kept going.

In numbers

• Time: a typical part designed, simulated and drawn in about 5 working days.
• Money: about €7,500 earned in 7 months. On one bracket, a stress analysis saved the client a second prototype run of about €1,200.
• Errors: 13 of 15 first prototypes were made without changes.
• Adoption: 6 of 9 clients came back with another project.
• Scale: 15 projects and more than 60 parts, for clients in 4 countries.

The work

• Parts and assemblies modelled in Fusion 360 and SolidWorks: brackets, housings, jigs for production lines, and frames and mounts for quadcopter drones, which gave the business its name.
• Simulation before manufacturing: stress analysis (FEA) to find the weak point before the first part was cut.
• Drawings the workshop can use: dimensions and tolerances for CNC machining and 3D printing.
• 15 projects for clients in Romania and abroad in 7 months.

What freelancing taught me

Every brief is incomplete. The client knows what the part must do, rarely what it must survive. I learned to ask about the load, the material and the machine that will make it before drawing a single line. Asking the right questions first is still the most useful thing I do on a project.