Design- First Hand Experience & Interests

"[Archimedes] happened to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed that the more his body sank into it the more water ran out over the tub.  As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question, he jumped out of the tub and rushed home naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking; for he as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, "Eureka, eureka." meaning "I have found (it), I have found (it)."

-Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

So I've come up with a design list of things that interest me that if I were going into design that I would want to probably pursue. It's unfortunately a short list, but I feel they will  grow as time progresses. Here goes.

Lets start with things I've had to design... for my MAE 311 Machines and Mechanisms class we had to design a Rube Goldberg inspired elevator from scratch. In case you are unfamiliar with Rube Golberg, here's a video of Honda's famous commercial showing you what it is.



 Now this is the first time I've ever had to design anything let alone build it. The project entailed five energy transfers to place the brick, that is supposed to be lifted two feet off the floor onto a platform, the front desk in the class room. We had constraints like true design as seen here

Requirements/Constraints:

·         Machine/Mechanism should be no larger than 2 feet x 2 feet x 3 feet.

·         Must complete task of placing one brick on top of the desk.

·         Minimum of 5 energy transfers, also called steps.

·         Only one human input allowed. It cannot be the placement of brick on elevator

·         Must lift one brick at a time.

·         Brick must be placed on the platform, so no throwing of bricks

·         No more than $15 per person in cost for purchased materials.

T           The brick cannot be touched until after it is placed on the platform.

You can see our projects technical report here, it includes pictures, constraints, requirements, final design and explanation as to what we did, detailed explanation on how it works: 


Here's what our final design looked like:

A brief explanation(detailed explanation in pdf file),
So the brick is place on the platform, the hammer is set back at angle, and held in place with a small piece of wood, to swing forward. Once everything is in place you begin cranking, the crank pulls the piece of wood letting go the hammer. The hammer swings and hits the brick and it falls down the slide. It lands on the elevator base and is lifted in the air approximately 30 inches. Near the top there is a counterweight, that is activated by a pin. Once the platform along with the brick is lifted, it activated the pin and the counterweight falls down. The counterweight lifts back end of the platform and enables the brick to slide onto the desk. Simple. Yes. When it came to competition day, did it work? No. The counterweight itself was too heavy cause the back of the platform to rise to quickly and something causing the brick to  fall straight down. Learning lesson. Overall it was an interesting project and gave me first hand how design and testing plays a crucial role into a product. Combined with my MAE 451 class, it also taught me to think further beyond just manufacturing and CAD.

Heres a small slideshow with our group member working on it and a couple of other groups from the competition.