SLUGME9 Recap

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The SOLIDWORKS Largest User Group Meeting Ever (SLUGME) is an annual global gathering for SOLIDWORKS users. It combines expert talks and live design projects. Over the years, it has grown into a 24-hour event with hands-on projects and community-building activities worldwide.

SLUGME gatherings promote collaboration, learning, and social impact through innovative uses of SOLIDWORKS.

 

For SLUGME7, we focused on initiatives supporting social causes across continents, and for SLUGME8, we showcased a live build of a lending library. For details, you can check out these recent blogs:

For SLUGME9, we wanted to expand on the Live-Build aspect and build something more advanced. Jason Pohl offered to help with SLUGME9, but on one condition: he insisted that we build something with a motor. We knew that this meant we would need some additional help.

We asked the team from Bowhead to provide us with the electric drive train from one of their amazing off-road bikes. They came through for us in a big way. We received their entire drive train, complete with snap-together connectors and the CAD files to match. They saved us months of time. Check out this clip, where we recap this build with Bowhead.

We were able to source rolling-frame, three-wheeled drift karts from another vendor. This frame is designed to work with a small gas engine. Our SLUGME9 design challenge was to retrofit this Bowhead electric drivetrain into this adult big wheel drift machine.

Spoiler Alert – It worked, and we had a blast completing this challenge. I am so fortunate to be surrounded by an incredibly talented group of people who helped with this project simply because they wanted to.

The broadcast was scheduled for October 24th. This meant that we needed to complete the build of the drift trikes over the summer and do some pre-shooting in September. Jason Pohl stepped up and offered to host the build at his home workshop. Over July and August, our team visited the workshop for in-person build sessions and countless virtual design review sessions. The result was two working drift trikes with detailed virtual 3D models.

If you want a detailed rundown of this event, you must watch all 3+ hours. Be sure to check the video description. We have created bookmarks to help you navigate the show more quickly. My favorites were walking through the design of Todd’s Mega Mount and seeing the video of our team drifting around the parking lot in Waltham.

Check it out here.

The SLUGME9 broadcast offered a lot of value to our viewers with extensive technical tips on:

  •        Sheet Metal Design and bending techniques
  •        Basic and advanced stress analysis
  •        Advanced pattern creation with Pattern Shape Creator
  •        Designing for 3D printing
  •        Mold Design
  •        Weldments
  •        Surfacing with xShape
  •        Waterjet
  •        Vacuum forming

In just four days, the video has been viewed over 4,000 times. For much of the broadcast, over 300 people watched live and communicated in the Live Chat. People from 40 countries have viewed the stream, making this a truly global event.

There are so many people that we would like to thank in regard to this event. Todd Blacksher and Eric Beatty have continued to lead this event year after year and we are grateful to be able to elevate the event to the entire SOLIDWORKS Community. The internal build team, production team and supporting staff at SOLIDWORKS has grown to 12+ people. Each year we seem to add more talented people to the team. Big thanks to Dell and NVIDIA for all of the support. We also received much needed support from Omax, 3DPRINTUK, METALWORKS, and OBITAL FX.

To close out this recap, check out the team drifting the Karts around Waltham and stay tuned for SLUGMEX.

Dan Wagner

Dan Wagner

Dan is manager of the SOLIDWORKS User Group Network (SWUGN). he has spent over 12 years in the reseller channel providing technical support to SOLIDWORKS users, teaching SOLIDWORKS classes, and delivering marketing & sales presentations to new and experienced SOLIDWORKS users. He is a Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert and is thrilled to continue serving the SOLIDWORKS community for many years to come.