Created by Megan Enriquez and Margo Gee
This one came entirely out of one wild brainstorming session in class. We changed all but one mechanism in our final project. When we started, we were working with mechanisms #138, 1 and 2, 26, and 92, and ended up using mechanisms # 276, 24, and 92, as well as a crank.
Our Process
We brainstormed quite a bit of fun ideas to add to our mechanisms before hunkering down and beginning to think about how they would all fit together. We thought about adding piercings to the ears, and designed little owls to serve as earrings.
Lo-Fi Prototype
We made our lo-fi prototype out of cardboard and ping pong balls, as a way to model out the overallshape of the design. We couldn’t figure out how to integrate the eye mechanism (mechanism 92), which was left unresolved in the integration of our hi-fi prototype later.
Hi-Fi-Prototype
For our hi-fi prototype, we mapped out all the cuts we had to make on wood onto 4 artboards on adobe illustrator, and moved the pieces around based on which ones had and hadn’t been cut yet. When we went to cut the crank (our metal piece), the grating had to be replaced on the WaterJet cutter, so we had to wait on that too. We do not have a picture of our finished project, as we clocked a total of 27 hours in the OEDK for the last hours before the deadline, and almost all of that was spent working without break.
Successes and Failures
Our project was not of adequate scale to be completed in the time we had. It is incomplete. The eye mechanism caused a lot of problems, and ended up having to be scrapped last minute because we couldn’t figure out how to actually integrate it into our design without breaking other things. The ears work fine, though.
Moving forward, scaling the project to the timeline we are given will make for a less creative, but far less strenuous project that might end up being more fun.
A video of our machine in motion, and our slideshow!
| Cost Breakdown | |||||
| Category | Item | Price | Source | Quantity | Total ($) |
| Materials | Wood Plank | 16.50/sheet | Home Depot | 6 sheets | $99 |
| Aluminum sheet | 11.99/2 sheets | Amazon | 1 order | $5.99 | |
| Vinyl | $8.99/roll | Amazon | 1 | $8.99 | |
| Spray paint |
negligible amount used
|
$39.96 | |||
| Wood glue | $9.99 | Amazon | 4 | $9.99 | |
| Labor | Design Engineer | $26/hour | ZipRecruiter | 23 hours x 2 people | $1,196 |
| Overhead | Laser Cutter | $0.82/hour | Epilog Laser | 8 hours | $6.56 |
| Water Jet Cutter | $19.86/hour | WardJet | 4 hour | $79.44 | |
| TOTAL: | $1,446 |
