By designing our gear sets with geargenerator, we can customize gear sizes. We created a gear set for the bottom acrylic box to house two gears (one pitch diameter = 6, the other pitch diameter = 4.  Also, we created another gear set for the back windmills (pitch diameter = 2 and 1.5 respectively). The five gears at the background are used for three windmills to make all of windmills rotate in the same direction because gear next to each other will rotate oppositely. Make sure to include the necessary slots and holes for assembly. Once your design is ready, export it in a format compatible with your laser cutter as SVG. As importing the files into adobe illustrator, we resized the total length of gear sets in the bottom box as 10in, and the total length of gear set at the back for windmills as 12.5in to fit in the box dimension. Also, we created a hole with 0.24 in diameter in the adobe illustrator for the alignment with wood stick.

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As we did in the previous assignment, we customized box with boxmaker as (13*8*2) inch with fingers. This box will contain two gears connected to a smaller wood box as (2.5*2.5*2) inch with medium size wood stick (0.24in).

Also, I draw a windmill with four fans and handle in the adobe illustrator,  and connect all the parts with shape build tool for laser cut.

We reset laser cutter’s specifications for power and speed settings to cut the gears with cardboard for low fidelity model and with wood for high fidelity model. We ensure accuracy in the cutouts and holes to enable smooth gear movement as the dimension we determined in the illustration. At the same time, we downloaded a few butterfly and flower patterns from noun project as SVG for laser cutting as well.

After cutting the windmills, gears and boxes, we assembled the mechanical components. We connected the gears using wood glue and wood sticks to ensure that they mesh properly. To make the gears more sturdy, we glued two layer of gears together. When we assemble all the components here, we just realized we need some rings to differentiate the thickness of three windmills for stacking and serve as joint to connect the gears, box and sticks. So, we laser cut many 1 inch diameter circles with 0.24 in hole with wood. The windmills will not fight with each other during rotation due to different elevation. We put a CD disk on the big gear to make it colorful when spinning with super glue.

We used water jet-cut this piece from a stainless steel sheet. The gear handle should have a grip suitable for easy rotation. To make it thicker, we also laser cut two wood handles with same size to make it look more sturdy and glue them together as shown below. We sandblast the gear handle after cutting to add texture and detail. Sandblasting will make handle a more polished appearance.

After assembly all the mechanical portion of this model, we started to decorate this model with different color and pattern. We spray painted the windmills as blue, flowers as red, and butterflies as pink before finally gluing all of them. We put the little box connecting to the bottom gear sets and glue the flowers and butterflies into the box with thinner wood sticks.

Finally, we a vinyl cutter to create a Rice logo in blue and our names in orange to affix to your model. Vinyl decals can be an excellent way to personalize your project and give it a branded touch. As names are detailed, some of pieces are hard to peel it out, I used ultrasound blade to hand cut a few pieces.

Crafting a laser cut gear generator and assembling it into a mechanical marvel is a fantastic DIY project that combines art and engineering. By laser cutting gears, designing an acrylic box, water jet-cutting a unique gear handle, adding texture through sandblasting, applying vinyl decals, and finishing with creative spray painting, all of learned skills from previous class are all applied this time.

Cost analysis: