Design Overview & Prep

For the midsemester project, Summer and I worked on designing a ferris wheel! Our inspirational for the idea mainly came from our interest in visiting the Downtown Aquarium’s ferris wheel that is just a short drive away from campus. Consequently, we felt it was fitting that we construct a mini ferris wheel as a prelude to our future trip to the one in the aquarium.

Here is a link to the video showing our final device: IMG_0115

Our first step for the project was finding a mechanical movement from the 507 Mechanical Movements website that could mimic the motion of an actual ferris wheel. Generally, we looked for motions that involved rotating gears since they would allow the ferris wheel to spin. In the end, we decided on Mechanical Movement 68 because  the driving wheel is able to spin one full revolution and drive another gear into rotation only once. We felt that this mechanism would best mimic the motion of a real ferris wheel since they traditionally rotate only a fraction of a revolution at a time and pause in between each wheel rotation to provide riders time to get on/off the ferris wheel and to enjoy the views from their vantage points.

Then, we moved onto visualizing our entire design by sketching our ferris wheel digitally, and we prepared AI files of our components for our first round of prototyping.

Low/Medium Fidelity Prototype

After designing the wheel, triangle frame, seats, and dowels on a drawing platform, we moved to Adobe Illustrator where we relied on set dimensions for the Ferris wheel. We wanted the Ferris wheel to have a diameter of 6 inches as we wanted it to be a factor of the final prototype which would be a foot wide. We also wanted the A-frame to have some distance from the base and point at the center of the wheel. Thus, we set the height as 5 inches and the width as 8 inches. We made the width of the seats 1 inch as we wanted them to be large enough to be easily printed and to have a hole for the seats to swing while ensuring that it was small enough so that the Ferris wheel was not too wide. The gears were 3 in by 3 in as we wanted them to be especially large on the low fidelity model and to match the dimensions of the final model. We then laser cut these dimensions on wood as we wanted the material to match the final product, so we can adjust if this material did not work well. This was not needed, however. To secure the model, we used wood glue on the A-frame bottoms and attached the Ferris wheel to a plank of scrap wood. We did not securely attach the wheel component as we wanted to use the low fidelity prototype to view the dimensions of the final product and determine any stylistic changes to the model.

Overall, our low/medium fidelity model helped us visualize the amount of rotation the 3in x 3in gears would have on the Ferris wheel. However, there were some issues with our general assembly that we noticed and needed to address. Mainly, our gears were not aligned since the top gear was placed behind the A-frame while the bottom gear was meant to sit in front of the shorter A-frame. After receiving some feedback and suggestions from the midterm project check-in, we pivoted to building a single frame that had a horizontal bar to hold both gears behind it ensuring they would lie in the same plane and remain aligned.

High Fidelity Prototype

After the low-fidelity prototype, we modified the dimensions of the wheel, maintained the dimensions of the seats, and designed the A-frame, stoppers, base, handle, and dowels on Adobe Illustrator. The Ferris wheel had a diameter of 12 inches, the A-frame had a height of 10 inches and a width of 14 inches, the base was 6 inches wide and 16 inches long, and the handle was 4 inches long.

There were many issues with the laser cut. Firstly, the cut of the components was inconsistent and many times we were not able to push our pieces out of the wood despite the speed being at the lowest possible setting. Additionally, when the laser did cut through, the wood was of very cheap material so it was easily damaged. However, after many attempts of laser cutting, we were able to cut all of our pieces and moved on to spray painting using the colors below.  

Because there was a very limited supply of spray paint, it was very difficult to paint the parts evenly, so we had to use acrylic paint to paint over the wheel a camel color. This was very difficult as it ruined the quality of our work and made the wood thicker.

With assembly, we had issues with securing the model with wood glue as the model fell apart many times. We eventually used super glue that a classmate purchased which helped secure the models. For the chairs, we attached them by a thread as they were thin enough to allow the chairs to swing with movement and could easily be tied around the wheel. The thread was also secured with super glue. Stoppers were used in the assembly process to help keep the gears on the same plane and ensure that the wheel did not move around the dowel as the gear rotated. We incorporated vinyl cutting by using a light purple sticker on the outside of the Ferris wheel. The vinyl cutter jammed multiple times and would have errors that Lab Assistants had difficulty assisting with. Eventually, we were able to cut enough material to properly outline the wheel as displayed below.

Reflection

Overall, completing this project was very frustrating. Many times we spent very late nights in the OEDK to complete our project because the machines would not work. It was especially difficult as many of the issues we experienced were outside of our control. However, it did allow us to explore troubleshooting and try to construct our concepts into physical prototypes with the limited materials we had. We are proud of what we were able to accomplish although we hope we can have more supplies for future projects.

Here is the slide deck overviewing our process: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1klTrC03WYaGd9D1lp_K_pJtxr-kNHnhra5hHCAvRqRY/edit

Cost Analysis

Materials/Equipment:

• 5 pieces of 1/4″ thick planks of 12″x12″ birch plywood – $28.99
• 1 piece of 1/4″ diameter 48″ long dowel – $1.11
• 1 spool of thread – $4.94
• 1 tube of wood glue – $3.47
• 1 roll of vinyl/sticker paper – $9.74
• 4 cans of spray paint (light blue, dark blue, purple, satin gloss) – $4.98 * 4 = $19.92
• 1 bottle of acrylic paint – $1.08
• 6 sponge paint brushes – $4.98
• assume access to equipment (including laser cutter, vinyl cutter, Adobe Illustrator, and other miscellaneous items) is free through an already established system (public or private)

Labor:

•  $20/hr/laborer * 40 hrs/laborer * 2 laborers = $1600
  • Admittedly the total labor cost of $1600 is quite pricey but Summer and I actually spent nearly 40 hrs in the OEDK for this project. Much of this was because of the ineffectiveness of the laser cutter and the amount of time we wasted physically cutting out our pieces.

TOTAL COST = $1674.23