WEEK 3: Simple Mechanism Prototype

Part 1: Sketch
I scrolled through every page of 507 Mechanical Movements and couldn’t get this one out of my head. I think it’s something about the circle knob on the horizontal bar juxtaposed with the sharp edges of the other components. The description reads:“Rectilinear motion of horizontal bar, by means of vibrating slotted bar hung from the top.“

Part 2: Prototype
My instinct was to try making it out of cardboard, but I found this to be more difficult than anticipated. It felt clunky and if I accidentally bent the cardboard, it would get soft and wouldn’t hold it’s shape as well. I decided to move to paper, which I am more comfortable using.

I started by cutting out the horizontal bar and securing it in place. At first, I taped the vertical holds down, but later switched to cutting small slits and feeding the paper through them so it sat more flush against the paper.

V1: purple holds taped on the front of the paper

V2: purple holds fed through the paper through small slits. This is a view of the back of the paper it's mounted on.

To make the bars more sturdy, I taped two pieces together on top of each other.

The vertical bar was still to flimsy, so I hot glued 2 more layers. The hot glue created more structure.

I rolled up long pieces of paper to make the knobs attached to the horizontal bar and the knob that the black bar rotates around. Making it helped me figure out uses cases for this mechanism - I think the point of it is that two separate movements (horizontal and curved movement) can be controlled by one source of rotation (in this case, the orange knob at the top.