Week 10. Mechanical design & machine design

During Week 10 of the Mechanical Engineering course, we covered the topics of Mechanical Design and Machine Design.

Firstly, we learned about Mechanical Design, which refers to the process of designing mechanical components, machines, and systems. We discussed the various factors that need to be taken into account when designing mechanical components, such as material selection, manufacturing processes, and safety considerations. We also learned about the different types of mechanical components, such as bearings, gears, belts and shafts, and their applications in various machines and systems.

Group Assignment:
- Work and communicate effectively in a team and independently.
- Design, plan and build a system.
- Analyse and solve technical problems.
- Recognise opportunities for improvements in the design.

Output Preview

Idea & Tasks

For this week we worked as a group to design and operate a machine.

We have gone through several ideas then decided to make Kinetic Sand Table.

A metal ball- rolling silently through sand to automatically create and erase patterns

We listed down each machine part and each of us took a specific task, mine was:

Rotational Axis & Table frame

CAD Design

Fabrication (laser cut & 3d printing )

Integration & Assembly

CAD Design

I designed the rotary table that would hold the linear axis, I used rotary bearing to get smooth rotation and thrust bearings to hold the axis weight. also, I used two different sizes and no of teeth to get a better ratio.

Belt length calculator

Then I designed the table, it contains 3 parts( top - mid-ring - bottom) , for the mid-ring it needed to be adjustable. so I used threaded rods for fine adjustment.