We knew we wanted a carnival ride… and we both love Christmas… so we decided on a Christmas carousel. I drew up an idea of what we could use on the whiteboard desk.
In this model, the mechanism that makes the horses move up and down is just a hilly circular piece of wood. We found this to be pretty simple, but later decided to change this to better reassemble an actual carousel…
Originally we planned to make a grooved base that has high and low grooves so that as the reindeer (not horses) went in a circular motion they would move up and down depending on how high the groove was. Actual carousels utilize bevels and crankshafts, and to use this in our project we figured it would be best to simplify this. To make our carousel move in a circular motion we used gears (movement #24 from the 507 mechanical movements). We also needed to create an up and down motion for the reindeer so we used a movement that is similar to a combination of movements #39 and #268. These can be seen in the figures below:
Gears for movement 24 Original wheel connected to crank (39 and 268)
Low-fidelity Model:
We began with a low fidelity model. To preface, since the laser cutters broke during this process, we weren’t able to make a full 3d prototype, but we did have plans.
We spent a lot of time on adobe illustrator drafting up plans of all the parts we needed. We used a shared google drive to organize our adobe illustrator files.
We had to start by manually cutting 🙁
This was our general look for our carousel.
Carousel with bases and stand Horse in front of cardboard carousel
Then, it was time to move on from cardboard to some plywood! We just had to cut out the designs we had created previously. The “finalized” designs are below.
2D design of project with quantities 2D reindeer and wheel design w/bearings
Piece-by-piece description of parts of updated design
As you can see, we love drawing on the whiteboard desks lol.
Mid-fidelity Model:
We decided to have four main bases where one would be directly under the gears. Another would be directly above the gears and holding bridges and stands so that the wheels will be able to turn with a pole that goes through the bridges. Also, because our reindeer would be printed out on a flat piece of wood, we felt it would be a good decision to connect two reindeer pieces together (one with a gap so the pole could go “inside it”) so that the reindeer would appear thicker.
Base with bridges (pre-supporting poles/stands)
Once we put together the pieces of our mid-fidelity model that’s when we experienced some issues.
The top two bases were unfortunately too small for there to be easier turns for the wheels so we needed to make them larger. Another issue was that the crank connected to the wheel was too large and not round enough for the turns, thus making the wheel stop and not do full turns. Lastly another problem was that the wheels were not touching the bottom base, and because of this there could not be an up/down motion for the reindeer.
Movement of Pre-fidelity Carousel Video
High Fidelity:
I decided to redo the entire project with a new design and adobe files. I decided on a base that hides the gears. I realized later that this was probably not the best idea since taking the press fit box apart is so difficult, especially since I used the round edges press fit box.
I generated gears through geargenerator, put them in illustrator, altered the size so they were around 18inches across, then made the press fit box 20 inches across. I had to alter the en.makercase.com box plans because the one they gave me didn’t actually bend. To make it bend, I added more lines and pushed them closer together.
I re-laser cut the ‘bridges’ to be press fit into the moving base. Lots of math involved In this process since I had to take into account kerf to not use wood glue.
The wheel and reindeer pole mechanism was definitely the most difficult part of this process. because we wanted the reindeer to move straight up and down, we needed a small connector between the wheel and the reindeer pole. This little connector was very finicky and needed to be a specific size or the wheel wouldn’t turn right (the reindeer pole would drop onto the base rather than be held up by the tension of the small connector).
This picture is of the small connector but in 5 slightly different sizes. Only the one I’m pointing to worked.
At first, the reindeer poles were made out of wood, but I decided to change this to acrylic because the wood-wood connection introduced a lot of friction and made the wheels harder to spin. This was also a good design choice because it looks more like the reindeer are flying!
To hide the thick poles that hold all the bases together, we used 4 2x2x3 press fit boxes and spray painted them red and gold.
To connect the reindeer to their poles, at first we were going to glue them together in a sandwich onto the pole, but I thought it looked nice being press fit. However, only one was press fit so I had to use super glue for the other 2.
For our metal piece, I plasma cut a handle. The plasma cutter leaves a lot of metal around it, so I used the metal sander and the sand blaster to remove it.
Although we wanted to make everything press fit, we had to use glue for the large gear. The movement of this gear gave us trouble because the dowel had to move so much weight. Additionally, because our dowels were round, it was very easy to slip, and the glue came undone at one point. This wouldn’t have been an issue if we used square dowels… which we should’ve, but normally there are some available by the other dowels but there weren’t.
To increase the friction between the wheel and the base, we used rubber bands around the wheel.
Tadaaaa. our final product. We used vinyl as decoration on the stability dowels and our name plate has cute engraved pictures!
Cost analysis:
x5 Plywood (3/16″ x 2′ x 4′): $12.89 x 5 at Home Depot = $64.45
x1 Acrylic board= $18.48 at Home Depot
x3 Rust-Oleum spray paint = $5.98 x 3 = 17.94 at Home Depot
x2 3″ x 11″ Vinyl Sticker Paper = ~$6.72 on Amazon
13 bearings (20 pieces for $6.50 on amazon) = $4.23
Labor:
- each around 30 hrs… 60 hrs * $15/hr = $900
Total: $1011.82 whaaaa?? (all labor lol)
Picture of cleaned workspace:
video of project:
In this video, the rubber bands were taken off I don’t know why? So it looks like only one reindeer is moving but that’s just because the wheels need more friction to turn.
