Hi!
For our midterm project, Jolina and I started with the idea of making a music box but with an ocean theme and to have a Whale in it. The whole thing was split into three gates, which actually helped a lot because it gave us structured points to make better iterations along the way. We kicked things off by trying to incorporate nautilus gears not just for the cool acceleration and deceleration effects, but also because they looked awesome and fit the aesthetic we were going for.
We were looking for some inspiration and came across these mechanical moving models of a whale. They looked super cool and actually seemed doable, so we decided to roll with that idea. By the time we hit Gate 1, we had our nautilus gears figured out and a solid vision of what we wanted to create.
After that, we moved on to designing the entire model. Jolina focused on the whale while I worked on the mechanical movement region. We laid out our first set of designs and decided to test things out before committing to anything major.
I carefully measured everything to make sure the pieces would fit together and started cutting the cardboard, making sure to be mindful of the material. But when I put it all together, I was in for a surprise the whale was way bigger than expected, the cams were too small and the box itself needed some adjustments. So, I went back to Adobe Illustrator, upsized the cams, and tweaked the box to get the kerf just right.
But just when I thought I had things under control, the whale body split right down the middle another shock I wasn’t ready for.
Our gate 2 whale
Design of the whale
whale breaking on us
With Jolina’s and another friend’s effort all the way from Berlin, we went ahead and downsized the whale for Gate 3. We also adjusted the cam sizes, Dowel length and redesigned some parts. This time, we had to be extra precise, especially with the body hinges, because they needed to be closer together. Turns out, they kept breaking when I was cutting them on wood, so getting them to fit while keeping them flexible was a whole challenge in itself. The cams were from 507 mechanical movements under cams 130.
And just when we thought we had it figured out, reality hit hard. The cams and followers weren’t going to hold up under all that weight. So, we had to rethink our approach. That’s when we decided to add dolphins they were lightweight and actually helped with the overall structure. To give it more support (and to make it look even better), we also designed waves, which added both stability and a nice aesthetic touch. We also had a cute hand crank. For our post processing, we sanded some parts of our model. Some of them are shown in pictures below:
Dolphins
Hand crank
Cams
Followers and guides
Our vinyl component was the waves. We cut out the waves and stuck them onto each other.
Once we put it altogether, it looked like this:
The Video Demonstration is as follows: IMG_0382
A clean working space:
The Cost Analysis:
| Category | Quantity | Unit Cost (USD) |
Total Cost (USD)
|
| Labor (40 hrs @ $10/hr) | 40 hrs | $10 | $400 |
| Wood (4 sheets @ $20 each) | 4 sheets | $20 | $80 |
| Dowels | 1 unit | $10 | $10 |
| Vinyl (Blue Vinyl Paper) | 1 roll | $9 | $9 |
| Wood Glue | 1 bottle | $6 | $6 |
| Sandpaper | 1 pack | $8 | $8 |
The total amount for the project spent – $513
