For my 2D drawing of a mechanism, I went on the 507 mechanical movements web page and picked mechanism #269. Mechanism #269 showcases an altered double sided rack and pinion with teeth’s positioned on the rack so as to give the gear an alternating rotary motion.
Figure 1: Mechanical Movement #269
For my drawing I wanted to draw all the part individually so they can be laser cut separately and then joined. The first part was the spur gear driving the rack. I knew that tracing the image of the gear wouldn’t be a very effective use of my time so using my peers as a resource I was able to improvise and tackle it in a more effective way. I was able to intersect a star and a circle using the ‘intersect’ which gave me a symmetric gear. After intersection I then overlaid another circle atop the other ‘gear’ to get rid of some of the point edges left by the star.
Figure 2: Before using intersect tool, overlaying star on circle
Then I moved on to the double sided rack. For this I decided to use the trace function which will be effective because I was able to at least trace the outside, rectangular shape of the rack. Then for the teeth for the gear I was able to copy and paste the actual teeth from the gear onto their positions on the rack. Using the pen tool I was then able to connect the teeth with the rack to complete that part.
Figure 3: Tracing the Rack
On the ai file attached I put the two separate pieces together but left them ungrouped so they can be laser cut separately.
