Kinetic Sculpture
For this week's assignment, I had several ideas:
- Boat / ocean
- Flying Pokémon
- Ferris wheel
I decided to make the ferris wheel!
Step 1: Sketching
To start my design process, I began by hand-sketching some ideas and designs for the ferris wheel. After some rough idea drawing, I translated my sketch to Fusion and made some adjustments.
Step 2: Prototyping
Before I cut out my design, I first made a smaller prototype to play around with the spinning mechanism. I sketched and cut out a smaller 6-inch circle, an attachment for the motor, and some temporary legs for the wheel. I decided to use a gear motor to spin my ferris wheel, since the spinning part isn't a circle, so it would be easier to get it to spin my structure.
After cutting out my pieces, I got the prototype spinning with the motor. I made some slight adjustments along the way to the dimensions of the motor attachment so it would better fit the shape of the motor.
Step 3: Wheel construction
After making my prototype spin, I made some minor adjustments to the dimensions of my full sketch on Fusion accordingly. Once ready, I cut the parts for my ferris wheel in the laser cutter.
Afterwards, I started assembling the pieces of my ferris wheel together. This is where I ran into most of my design problems. I had some issues with aligning the spinning rod properly after assembling the legs. There were also some slight issues with the motor slipping out of the motor attachment.
Final product
Improvements
For the next iteration of this project, these are the changes I would like to make:
- Adjust dimensions of cardboard legs to better account for the thickness of the cardboard.
- Figure out a way to make the motor stay in the motor mount better.
- Be more precise while assembling the structure to ensure proper alignment of pieces.