Mechanic Arm

Intention

Write about the big ideas behind your project? What are the goals? Why did you make it? What are your motivations? 

For this project, I wanted to make an arm that is moving and drawing something by a simple mechanism. The motivation of this project was my previous project for my design studio. The project required me to create it only by hand. Therefore, this time, I would like to develop it by using techniques that I learned from this class. 

Research & Context

Describe what informed your ideas and your outcome? How does your outcome relate to other work in the field? What are the precedent projects?

There are many mechanic arms, but not horizontal one. Also, If you google it, only robotic arms come out. I would like to include  movements but work horizontally, so it is different than others and similar to my previous design studio work. Also, I would like to make it drawing. 

Aesthetic Inspiration

What influenced your design? Is there a specific style, art movement, or natural phenomena? Include at least one example.

The inspiration is my previous project for the design studio class and a clock mechanism. I would like to make several cycles to interact and push each other to move as a mechanism. 

Sketch Your Project Below

Include dimensions, point of actuation, materials, colours, etc. 

material could be cardboard or wood

Process & Procedure

Outline your approach to the project? What ideas did you generate and how did you refine or reject them? What did you research and explore? what were the design choices? What challenges were encountered and how did you resolve them?

I did sketch a mechanic arm. I did research more and put more details for drawing it in illustrator and make it 3d in fusion. I wanted to make a simple version of it with cardboard first and see what works and what doesn’t work. 

Draw a cross section of your object and list the modeling steps in F360. Consider which plane to make your first sketch in, the basic geometries of your project, and what measurements or joints you will need. 

I drew a flat version of it as the sketch about on the top plane and extrude them for details. 

[two renderings]

Product

Detail what you created. What methods or techniques did you use? What tools and technologies were involved? Include images, code or video.

The top image is a photograph of a drawing mechanism that I made without any laser cutting techniques. I only made with cardboard and pin. The mechanism that I used for it and this project was wheel mechanism that is a wheel pushing another wheel. For the cardboard one, I used the back part of cardboard to make them to push each other. But this time, I made wheels that look like a clock wheel to effectively and clearly make them to spin. I made of them in different scale for interesting results. 

[five semi-pro photos]

Reflection

Reflect on the process of making this project. What did you learn? What would you do differently?

For this project, it was very hard to keep my first sketch and draw it in fusion in the same way. However, when I saw cut wheels and an arm, I was very satisfied. To me, it was very hard to make a drawing mechanism only by hand. We cut so many times to make them to work. But this time, since I planned and sketched before and used laser cutting techniques to cut all the parts of the mechanism, I think it worked very well and it was very easy to make a mechanism. Next time, I would like to make a more complex mechanism that I did think but could not make when I was freshmen since I got a strong skill of laser cutting.