Creative Technology – Design Challenge #7
Design and fabricate a laser-cut cardboard automata.
Our cardboard automata were supposed to follow an under the sea theme. My design was a shark that was chasing a group of fish. I wanted all these elements to move with the turn of a single crank, and I wanted the mechanisms to be more refined than what we used in class, so I decided to make a series of gears that would all be interconnected. The gears would be different sizes, so the shark would have a greater range of motion than the fish. Each gear would be connected to a simple up and down crank so the motion would be transferred almost entirely into the vertical axis.
The gears were where I ran into my first problem. The cardboard was thin and flimsy, so the teeth did not stay interlocked very well. Also, whenever they did separate, they would damage each other, making the problem worse. My first idea to solve this problem was to cut double the amount of gears I needed. I then glued two identical gears together to make the connecting surface area larger and hopefully make them stronger. The result was an improvement, but they still did not stay together as well as I would have liked. My final solution was to attach a small dowel to each tooth and use these dowels to transfer the motion rather than the gears themselves. This resulted in a much more robust mechanism that I was satisfied with.
My other problems all arose from my assembly being less precise than I expected. My design called for two rows of two fish being chased by the shark. Unfortunately, the gear and cam for the second row of fish did not fit within the frame, so I had to do away with it. Also, the fish had much more lateral movement than I had anticipated, so I wasn’t able to fit two side by side. The result only included the shark and one fish.
Despite all the issues I had, I am satisfied with the result. Given a few more iterations, I think I could have ended up with a very interesting product. This was my first real experience using Adobe Illustrator, as well as it was my first time ever laser cutting anything. In terms of future rapid prototyping, these are two excellent skills to have, and I’m sure I will utilize each many more times throughout my career.