12. Mechanical Design & Machine Design

Group Assignment

This week’s group assignment was to design a machine and build the mechanical parts to operate it. Our group, with group documentation linked, created a machine that drops a spider from the ceiling when the motion detector is set off

Week 12 Groupwork

My Work

Helping with hook design Participated in general problem solving and getting the product to work in testing Problems: String tangling

Research

Although I was unable to participate in most of this week’s design and hands-on activities due to personal reasons, I’ve reviewed the group’s progress and ensured I gained a complete understanding of the work completed and each function.

This week, the group focused on testing a thermistor and a photoresistor using simple analog circuits with an Arduino Uno. The thermistor circuit showed that increased temperature decreases resistance, while the photoresistors showed that increased light decreases resistance.

Both sensors used analog input to return values from 0 to 1024, representing voltages from 0V and VCC, which allows us to track changes in resistance as a change in voltage.

Although I was not present for the initial building, I was able to attend two group meetings and assisted with machine testing alongside our group. Though I don't feel my role assisted in the design or choice of project, I feel my support and mathmatical assistance towards the end of the project helped quicken the problem solving. Some of these things I assisted with were sketched of a new spindle which will be included below, help with math equations to know the amount of rotations needed to drop the spider a certain distance, and simple jobs such as holding up necessary parts during testing.

New Spindle Sketch

Final Mechanical Design