Mechanical Design
Assignment: Design or modify a machine making the passive parts and operate it manually.
Simple Machines
Gears
Gears produce a range of movements that can be used to control the speed of action. Gears are comparable to continuously applied levers, as one tooth is engaging, another is disengaging.
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| When these gears turn the attached arms open and close. |
Pulleys
Pulleys are an important part of most machines. Pulleys are simply gears without teeth and instead of running together directly they are made to drive one another by cables or belting of some kinds. As with gears, the velocities of pulleys are inversely proportional to their diameters.
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Design
In my design there is a hand crank with two pulleys. One belt is straight and the other belt is twisted. This twist in the belt causes one of the driven pulleys to run in the opposite direction of the other driven pulley.
References
Lessons learned
- Belts (rubberbands) were not the proper length.
- Pulleys on the handcrank were the wrong size. Pulleys on the large wheels needed to be larger then the handcrank pulleys.