Midterm 1 – Mechanical Model | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

In this midterm project, my partner, Raksha Prakash, and I worked on creating a functional mechanical mode. Initially, we wanted to do something ocean related, as we had found a nautilus gear, and wanted to make something that incorporated that.

Gate 1:

Then, as we were looking through Pinterest, we found some mechanical models of fully moving whales, and my partner and I were interested in creating something similar. For Gate 1, we provided theoretical models of what our final product was going to look like, as well as example images.

Gate 2:

To start, we started thinking about how we were going to start the project. I had laid out example models of what we were going to do. For the body, we wanted to use cylindrical shapes that varied in sizes, and for the head and the tail to be at the end. As for the movement, we wanted to use cams for the general movement. Below, it shows what I created for the initial illustrator model. In this process, however, we encountered quite a few problems. It seemed that the cylinder body shapes were unbalanced and unstable. On top of that, the cams were too big, and the box that held the device did not have enough support. The sticks that we initially used were also way too thin and did not hold support. Going onto the next gate, I decided to scale down the entire whale, make clips for the sticks to go in, make the cams smaller, and to create support for the box, which in this case, we decided to do waves because that was really cute.

Gate 3:

Gate 3 was when we got to printing what would ultimately be the final model. In this, I designed a comprehensive model of the entire project, with the scaled down the body of the whale. In this gate, I also remeasured and hand adjusted the kerf of every single finger and thing that needed to be fitted in some way. In this case, it was so that everything would fit well and move cohesively. I made sure to account for extra wiggle room when needed.

However, upon printing our first model with wood, we encountered. Quite a few problems. With hand calculating everything, there were very minor discrepancies in the joints and fingers. In this case, some parts of the wood were splintering and breaking. In addition, it seemed that with good space management on the wood, it was hard to place it so that the wood would be flat throughout. Because of this, the laser was out of focus and the cuts for the bends of the body of the whale were breaking because of this. Taking all of this into account, I once again remeasured things, and made the bend cuts closer and longer so that they would stretch more and be more forgiving. In addition, even after we had scaled down the whale, it was still too heavy. The sticks that we cut out were not nearly enough to hold up the weight distribution of the whale. Upon this, my parter and I decided that our idea seemed more unrealistic than realistic, so we pivoted. At the end, we decided to keep the ocean theme, but to add a twist to it. Instead of a whale, we decided to cut dolphins and use it as a part of the system, as the dolphins were lighter, and went up and down with the cams–as dolphins do.

As for the vinyl aspect, we decided to use blue vinyl and to make the waves blue. It was a conspicuous addition to the final project. In this process, we did not encounter any problems, as we had the files for the waves and all we had to do was import it so that it would cut onto the vinyl.

Conclusion:

While my partner and I encountered a lot of problems throughout this project, it was very helpful to be put into a situation where we would need to troubleshoot a lot. It helped me learn how to think on my feet and how to make quick, yet meaningful decisions. In addition, it was difficult, needing to pivot almost entirely for the main project. In the future, I would probably do a physical drawing before diving straight into designing. This way, I would be able to see the physical project before putting it into sheets on Illustrator.