Taking inspiration from Houston’s nickname “Space City”, for being the home of NASA’s mission control, we decided on a space themed project. After discussing it for a while, we landed on wanting to have an astronaut on the moon with a spaceship rotating around it, which also drew inspiration from the famous speech President JKF gave at Rice University. Originally, we wanted the moon to be composed of concentric circles that moved up and down while the spaceship rotated it; however, the teaching assistants told us that converting circular motion into vertical motion was extremely difficult. We pivoted and landed on a design in which most of the moon was static except for an astronaut at the top, which would rotate counter to the spaceship. With our design finalized and movement picked, #24, we were off to the races and started generating the parts on Illustrator and CAD programs.

Once we had the part files, we moved on to prototyping with cardboard. The initial iteration, seen below to the left, showed us that our design was too large and the moon disproportionally small. With the next iteration we were happy with the new size, but not the shape of the base.

Once we were happy with all the parts, we went off to cut our final cardboard prototype. However, the laser cutters were out of commission due to a fire. As the fire was potentially started due to cutting cardboard, we moved on to a high-fidelity prototyping cut using wood.

One of the main issues we found when cutting with wood was that the tolerances for our bearings and dowels were too large, making it too difficult to properly secure these pieces in place. We iterated to determine the optimal opening size that allowed the pieces to slide into place but still sit snuggly enough to be properly secured. The takeaway was that laser burns off enough material when cutting to allow for proper tolerance of the pieces, so openings were designed to the size of each piece.

Another issue we encountered was with the improper sizing of the gears. The gears designed using gear generator were too large when imported into Illustrator and had to be manually adjusted. Lastly, during this step we learned that dowel holding the spaceship was too close to the moon and needed to be shifted.

Once we were fully happy with the movement and the aesthetics of the design we moved on to the final cut. This also cut the aluminum handle of our movement using the water jet cutter, and the flags using the vinyl cutter.

Video:

This was a fun process made easier by the great team I worked with, Josefia and Kyler. I learned a lot about design during this project but the main one is patience because thing won’t work the first time or the second, but despite the frustration making something that you are proud of makes it worthwhile.

Clean final work station:

Cost Analysis:

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	2×4 Board	$12.89 /board	Home Depot	1 board	$12.89
	Ball Bearings	$6.99/20 bearings	Amazon	5 bearings	$1.75
	Super Glue	8.49/ 5 tubes	Amazon	1 tube	$1.70
	Wood Glue	3.97/bottle	Home Depot	1/10	$0.40
	Epoxy	7.49/0.85 oz	Home Depot	1/10	$0.75
	Dowel	1.88/dowel	Home Depot	1 dowel	$1.88
	Aluminum	12.58/sheet	Home Depot	1/6	$2.10
	Vynil	$0.41 / Count	Amazon	4 sheets	$1.64
Labor	Workshop Operator	$16/hr	Ziprecruiter	2hrs	$32.00
	Prototyping Engineer (You!)	$36/hr	Ziprecruiter	12	$432
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	$99/month	Ion	4hrs	$2.48
Design	Engineering and Development	$42/hr	Ziprecruiter	3hrs	$126.00
Iterations	Recuts	$12.89 /board	Home Depot	2 boards	$25.78
Misc.	Waste and Scrap	5%	Paper and JQLaser		$1.57
Total	$645.19

The main cost of this project was the prototyping, which accounted for slightly over 65% of the cost. This cost could be mitigated by hiring a more experienced prototyping engineer in the realm of mechanical engineering or other related fields. Due to my engineering interest I have never worked on a project like this before, and my inexperience prototyping, and using the equipment needed lead to excessively high production costs. However, once the initial design and prototyping costs are removed from the analysis a machine such as this would cost $87.19. This is still a step cost, however, when compared to other decorative and interactive products such as Lego’s Eiffel Tower Set, priced at $629.99, I believe that this machine is extremely well priced to bring both beauty and joy into people’s lives.