This week I made a trace of a v- grooved pulley (number 259 of 507 mechanical movements) in Adobe Illustrator for my Engi 210 homework.

To start off, I saved a picture from 507 mechanical movements and uploaded it into a new page on Illustrator (shown above). The quality was decent when viewed from afar, but when I zoomed I saw a significant decrease in the quality of the image. In order to make the image clear enough to use, I would have to trace it.

I started off by making the pre-existing image one layer, and the sketch I was about to make another layer called “trace”.

Now it was time to begin tracing. To make my image a reasonable size that would stand out, I chose a thickness of one point and made the color of my sketch red.

I started my sketch by tracing the features on the outside of the pulley. This mainly entailed using the rectangle feature to cover the straight parts of the imported image.

I traced the entire outer part with this method, and used ellipses with a width of 10 points and a height of 53 points to cover the rounded edges. After this step, my sketch (with the original picture covered up) looked like this:

Now it was time to add the interlocking center portion. To make it stand out I changed the color from red to blue and first added a thick line (2 points instead of one) running vertically through the center. With the original image still showing, I traced lines from the rectangles on the side to the center line all the way down.

After I finished tracing this lines, my sketch was pretty much complete. All I had to do was double check/ touch up on the lines I made and delete the layer with the image I imported before the image was ready to go.  A picture of the final work with the original picture is shown below.

Between  finding a system to trace, making the sketch, and touching up on it, this assignment took me an hour and a half to complete. The total cost of this assignment is that hour and a half of labor plus the use of a school computer with Adobe Illustrator. Assuming an hour of labor costs $10 and knowing Illustrator costs $20 a month, this image has a price tag of $35.

Overall, I am proud of the image I produced. It may have a few very minor problems such as the center lines not lining up perfectly, but overall it closely matches the figure on the 507 mechanical movements web page and looks aesthetically pleasing.