Week 5
Assignment
- Design and manufacture a kinetic structure using 3D printing and/or laser cutting
- A kinetic structure, by its nature, consists of at least three components with mechanical transmission between them.
- Ideally, structure, sculpture, or mechanism should have a specific function.
Structure
For long, I could not decide what to do, since I have no experience in kinetic structures. Also, the purpose of this mechanism was hard to find, or at least hard to invision in such a short period of time.
Finally, I have decided to create Yoke mechanism, which, I thought, was a great introduction to mechanical principles.
First iteration
I have created my yoke mechanism in Fusion 360. With applied joints and contact sets, I managed to animate the whole mechanism. The first try wasn't successful, though.
Thin elliptical follower
The slider was unfortunately too thin, and it broke just after I picked it up from heatbed. The other parts were also fragile, so I had to redesign it.
Second iteration
On my second try, the model was built parametrically to easily manipulate the thickness and gap tolerance.
Stuck slider issues
The hole for slider was too big, so it got stuck on the way back.
Third iteration
To solve the issue with stuck slider I created additional hole for the slider in order to reduce wiggling. I thought I could not make the hole smaller since it was already kind of hard to slide with the PLA material being grainy.
This way I ensured that the slider would not bend so much and the motion would be smoother.
Result
Overall I happy with the design, although it requires many more iterations to be sort of "functional". I did not manage to create a crankshaft for it, due to problems with my 3D printer.
Next steps
- I would create a little space between the disk and each slider to ensure smoother sliding (the sliders sometimes collide)
- Do it bigger and use some sort of bearing.
- Grease up the structure:)