I picked mechanical movement #325 from the 507 Mechanical Movements website for my 2D drawing. The mechanism itself is quite simple, it caught my attention because I felt like I had seen similar mechanisms in action in products that I have used and thought are cool. (I’m pretty certain that some cases for certain kinds of music equipment and tackle boxes that have more than one layer would use this mechanism, or one similar to it.)
Labeled drawing of mechanism (To see animation click here)
The mechanism is described as a “parallel ruler composed of two simple rulers, A, B, connected by two pivoted swinging arms, C, C.”
I started by taking a screenshot of the animated version of the mechanism and copying it into Adobe Illustrator. I then used the image trace function to create a silhouette of the image that I could work off of.
Animated screenshot uploaded into Adobe Illustrator
Image after having used image trace to get a silhouette
I then created a new layer in Illustrator so that I could use the silhouette as a template. I then used the shape functions in adobe to make the components, using the template as a guide. I first made one ruler using a rectangle and two circles and then copied and pasted it to produce the second. The same process with slight variation was applied to make the swinging arms. I then made four circles that could be used for pins if you wanted to laser cut this mechanism. The four larger circles I made I included in case you wanted to attach pin heads with some sort of adhesive to make it so that the mechanism wouldn’t fall apart. (I realized as soon as I got back home that you would need eight pin heads instead of four if you wanted to include them, but that’s an easy fix, as you can just copy and paste more into the Illustrator file I used.)
Components drawn in adobe using the shape functions
As someone who had only opened Adobe Illustrator once before this homework assignment, I can definitely say I feel more comfortable navigating the software now. As I said earlier, this mechanism is quite simple, so I think the next step for me to improve my ability with Adobe Illustrator would be to tackle something that would require me to create curved lines and not perfectly symmetrical shapes. I want to try and laser cut my mechanism when I have the chance, and if I can successfully put it together, I will next try to work on something more complicated to help me to continue to develop comfort and proficiency with Illustrator.
