For this project we had to choose a wooden machine out of a book of designs and follow the steps to create it. The machine I chose was a camshaft valve. When the wheel on the right is turned, the bar on the left lowers allowing liquid to “flow” from the two upper reservoirs to the lower one.

In order to create this design I created an illustrator file containing all the pieces I would need, then laser cut them out of a piece of plywood.

Most of the construction process consisted of simply gluing together the pieces. However there were a few aspects that were more difficult to assemble.

This is the bar on the right side of the machine that moves up and down in respect to the cam. I needed to chisel down the end until it was thin enough to fit under the upper layer of the wheel.

I also needed to cut away an area in the bar in order to insert guides to keep the bar moving vertically.

Lastly, I drilled a small hole in the top of the bar and inserted a small dowel which directly pushed the lever arm up and down as seen below.

Another difficult aspect was the interaction of the lever arm and the valve arm in the top left corner. I needed to chisel both of these down to half their original width so that they could slide by each other freely.

The weight in the upper right corner was plasma cut from a piece of aluminum, and sand-blasted to give it its finish.

The last issue I had was creating a cam that would smoothly push the bar up and down. I tried many different designs and finally settled on the one pictured below.