Week 11: Footage & Images << PART II >>

Brendan: "That's beautiful!"

{Materials}

We have built the mechanism of our physical model entirely out of construction toys called K'NEX. These toys provide us with rods, connectors, and a variety of accessory pieces (i.e. Wheels, Pulleys, Panels, Spacers, Gears, Bricks), varying in different shapes and sizes. Some other common materials we will be using for boxing in the mechanism, and aesthetic purposes and reasons are :

Cardboard
Tape
Paper
Kleenex Tissue
Bamboo sticks
Styrofoam balls
Coloring pencils/pens/paint
Colouring pens/pencils/paint
Clay

{Progress}

Great news: we have pretty much finished the mechanism earlier today. The remaining issue is identified: the lack of stability in the structure of our K'nex model causes minor wobbling and drooping. But a little sticky will fix things in a jiffy. This problem can be easily fixed with tape. Now, to mention about an improvement: we've increased the first gear's teeth's surface area by adding another gear beside the gear mated with the pole. Since this modification, all five gears are spinning beautifully. On a side note: it turns out that the crankshaft, which we switched to using instead of cams, cooperates with the rest of our design! Next up, we'll be finishing off the cardboard box that surrounds the mechanism. Decorations will be saved for week 12.