For my 2D drawing assignment, I chose a design for a water pump mechanism that I found in one of Wettergreen’s books. After scanning the schematics page as a pdf, I imported it into Adobe Illustrator. Unfortunately, using image trace to convert it into a vectorized image did not generate an accurate image, so I put the pdf in one layer and drew the shapes in a layer above it. Essentially, I manually traced the shapes in the pdf. To do this, I first drew any basic shapes that composed the various parts of the water pump: circles, rectangles, rounded rectangles, and triangles. Then I used the pen tool to draw the curves that connected them. Finally, I used the shape builder tool to connect all the shapes and curves to create each distinct part.

Since I had to demonstrate that I know how to use the laser cutter for lab assistant access, I decided to go ahead and cut out the water pump! Once it was all cut, I realized that the design required some modifications. The original design instructions called for the parts to be of various thicknesses, but I had cut the pieces out of the same piece of wood, so they were all 1/4″ thick. This was problematic in the bottom portion of the water pump, where parts must be able to overlap each other and some parts guide other pieces to slide in one direction. To compensate for this, I will need to re-cut some of the pieces and stack them on top of each other to create parts that are 1/2″ thick.

The design required another modification that I was able to foresee: the hole sizes. Before cutting anything, I went to the rapid prototyping cart and selected some dowels that I thought were a good size. I measured their thickness with the digital calipers (0.2″) and changed all the holes in my ai file to that size. When I was testing out the cut and power setting of the laser cutter, I killed two birds with one stone by cutting out a circle with a diameter of 0.2″ and then tested to see if the dowel fit snugly in the hole, while still being able to rotate. It did! It helped that the laser cutter works reductively, so the hole was probably a tiny bit larger than 0.2″ due to the laser’s curf.

I still need to laser cut the extra pieces before I can fully assemble the water pump, but once it is finished and operational, I will post pictures.