Finally, after 3 weeks of treating OEDK as my second home, ( literally, I slept here three times, left my backpack here instead of my room, and even did my work for other classes here), I am able to say I’ve never felt so proud of my work.
If you are reading this blog, this probably means that you’ve played around with my design and scanned the QR code on it. If not, no worries, you would know my design just as well after reading this blog post.
So, THIS IS IT!
A planetary gear system with custom and replaceable gears. It is a piece of art!
Usage instruction:
1. carefully take the design off its base
2. crank the plasma cut piece in the back with the dowel to propel the design. It is connected to the middle “sandwich” gear, which powers all the small gears around it 
3. make sure the opening on top is locked with the wooden piece provided
4. When using, please don’t crank too fast. Don’t force it to work, it should work snugly, or else it might just need some lubricant
5. To lubricate the gears, unlock the opening, and take out the gear you want to lubricate. Since the middle gear is suspended by the small gears at the center of the entire design, please don’t take out more than two gears at a time. Lubricate, put it back and then take out another.
6. make sure the small horizontal wood piece on the bottom of the back of the design rest on the vertical pieces of the base when you put it back
7. you can download the Ai file of the small gear design and design additional gears
So, how did I come up with this design? It was mainly adding new design features to the fundamental planetary gear system.
I found several gear generators which are really helpful.
- normal gear system generator: GEAR GENERATOR
2. planetary gear generator: MUELLERAR PLANETARY GEAR DESIGNER
From that, I generated my planetary gear system and build my first functional prototype.
The purpose of this prototype is to function as a proof of concept. It is to test if the file works and if I need to make improvements. I found that the middle gears are a little bit too small, and thus I scaled them in the following prototypes.
This was my initial design ( with all the auxiliary lines). As you may notice it was a lot simpler than my final design, it does not have a stand, the main focus was the gears. One problem at a time. During this process, I discovered the assignment option when you “transform” your design in Adobe illustrator. It is on the left upper corner in the transform window. Scaling with respect to the center makes life a lot easier!
Further, I design the “gyroscope” gears frame
It is a 3D design, so the dimensions depend on the material I use. I was too lazy to change the dimensions every time, so I took the average, and try to use material with the same thickness every time, which wasn’t ideal, but saved me a lot of time
So happy when your design works!!!!!!!!
This was only the frame, and I further designed more different structures to be put inside. Some of them are in the file above.
I tried to implement the replaceable gear system, so I design a track for the gears
Which I find so hard to align when assemble, and very unstable. so I change into the following
The slots are slightly curved to hold the gears
Further, I design the wings, the base, and the sandwich gear. This is the full scope of my design parts
When assembling my final prototype, I found the gears very easy to wabble, so I redesigned the middle gear so that all the gears are “sandwiched” together
I built a stand, which looks like this.
It is basically a 3D puzzle piece, which is composed of horizontal and vertical pieces that are held together through slots. I made a hilarious mistake here though. my first stand was designed with respect to my un-scaled 2D drawing, which has a much smaller dimension. LOL
It is then glued to a platform to make it more stable when the heavy gear system is rested on it. Additionally, the four vertical pieces are later applied when I discovered the gear system was very easy to fall off the stand.
I also added a lock and horizontal piece on the planetary gear as shown above at the beginning of this blog post. They were all add-ons to make my design more stable. And this shows that the engineering process is self-evolving, it is not fixed at the beginning. Changes are welcome throughout the design process. Your initial design does not have to be fully developed, though dimensions should be taken care of well in the beginning.
Moreover, I plasma cut the turning or cranking plate? I attempted to create a mirror finish as Arturo did, and I angle grind my piece for an hour. And, I give up. His mirror polishing was truly amazing.
These three weeks have been my happiest time ever, working, designing, and forgetting about time. (Huh? It’s 2 am already?) It is worth it, and the excitement when I materialize my own ideas, the dedication to something I love, the wonder of mechanical mechanisms, and the pride I felt are what keep me up at night, and what make me love this course–ENGI 210!!!
P.S. I’d never thought sanding was so tiresome before I sanded for 4 hours straight… To save your life, stay away from sanding! Just Kidding. (My fingers still hurt though…) And by the way, Tallow is amazing!
